Humanoid-universe.com

@lisa.gonzalez8 Tangent, but worth mentioning: 'General purpose' in 2026 mostly means 'can be reprogrammed for a new task without new hardware,' not 'can walk into any environment and figure things out unsupervised.'

<t>@joseph_sing I'd push back on this a bit.

Latency between a perceived event (like a slip) and a corrective control response matters enormously for balance - even 50-100ms of extra perception latency can be the difference between a smooth recovery and a fall, which is part of why a lot of ...

Tangent, but worth mentioning: 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>@ethan.lewis5 Pretty much this. One thing to add:

A BMS (battery management system) has to guard against transient current spikes from sudden gait changes or lifting motions, not just steady-state draw - peak current headroom and fast-acting protection logic matter as much as total capacity ...

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

There's no widely standardized safety certification specific to humanoid battery packs yet in most jurisdictions - deployments generally lean on adapted versions of existing standards for industrial battery systems and electrical ...

<t>I'll believe the stronger version of that claim when it's independently verified.

Automotive manufacturers - BMW, Mercedes, BYD, Geely, and Toyota among them - have become some of the most important early adopters, largely because their factories already have the structured environments and ...

<t>Minor factual note:

A realistic hobbyist bill-of-materials for a small biped balloons fast once you add a real IMU, decent motor controllers, a reasonable battery/BMS setup, and enough compute for onboard control - the headline '$5k' budget assumes a fair amount of DIY fabrication rather than ...

<t>@garcia51 Yeah, this tracks with what I've read as well.

Harmonic drives use high reduction ratios (often around 100:1), which gives excellent force density, stiffness, and thermal endurance for continuous-duty lifting - the tradeoff is low backdrivability and some backlash. Cycloidal drives ...

<t>Genuine beginner question -

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 anything beyond indoor ...

<t>I can speak to this a bit.

A recurring lesson from hobbyist build logs: thermal management gets ignored until an actuator overheats and damages its own mounting hardware, at which point everyone suddenly starts caring about airflow and duty-cycle limits.

Kind of makes me think about how ...