Humanoid-universe.com

<t>@hill23 This lines up with my experience.

A lot of hobbyists underestimate how much of the real difficulty in a DIY humanoid build is software and tuning rather than mechanical assembly - getting a robot to physically stand up is a much smaller fraction of the total project time than getting ...

<t>@nschmidt Pretty much this. One thing to add:

The common academic path into this field is a master's or conversion course in robotics or machine learning, followed by an internship or research role at a known lab or company - a PhD is common but increasingly not strictly required for industry ...

Pretty much this. One thing to add: A lot of the per-joint cost in a modern actuator isn't the motor - it's the combination of a precision gearbox, integrated encoders, torque sensing, and the driver electronics, all of which have to fit inside a housing the size of a fist.

<t>@sven.wilson4 Pretty much this. One thing to add:

It's common for a single humanoid to mix actuator types by joint - harmonic drives or hybrid geared actuators at the hips and shoulders where sustained torque matters most, and lower-ratio QDD-style actuators at ankles and knees where ...

<t>Follow-up question though -

Anti-backlash techniques in production actuators range from mechanical preloading (spring-loaded gear meshes) to purely software compensation that models and corrects for known backlash in the control loop. For dynamic walking and recovery, joint control bandwidth ...

<t>I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly.

Unitree's Dex3-1 dexterous hand packs around 33 pressure/tactile sensors per hand across the fingers and palm, capable of sensing pressure roughly in the 10g-2500g range - a useful reference point for what 'production tactile ...

<t>@jessica.karlsson This is a great summary, thanks.

Depth sensing range and reliability both degrade outdoors in direct sunlight for most structured-light and active stereo cameras, since the ambient IR washes out the projected pattern - it's a real limitation for humanoids intended for ...

Follow-up question though - Idle/standing power draw is often surprisingly close to a meaningful fraction of active walking power draw once you account for onboard compute, sensors, and balance-holding torque - 'doing nothing' still costs real energy on a humanoid.

<t>@amara.brown This lines up with my experience.

Group-buy arrangements for harder-to-source parts (small harmonic drives, precision bearings, custom PCBs) are a common way hobbyist communities work around the fact that specialty components are often only sold in industrial minimum-order ...

<t>Here's the relevant bit as far as I understand it:

Remote work remains genuinely limited for most hands-on humanoid hardware roles, given the need for physical access to robots and test environments, though software-only roles (simulation, perception algorithms, offline learning) increasingly ...