What's the current best practice for battery pack crash/impact protection?

[scott21]

To answer this directly: DC-DC conversion losses across all the individual actuator drivers add up across a whole robot - it's a less glamorous efficiency question than battery chemistry, but power electronics efficiency meaningfully affects real-world runtime too.

[dubois35]

Not to derail, but this reminds me of something adjacent: 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. The average humanoid in 2026 carries under 2.5 kWh of battery capacity, with real-world runtimes clustering between two and four hours depending on how dynamic the workload is - static, low-motion tasks stretch runtime much further than continuous walking or lifting.

[chenperez]

@dubois35 This matches something I went through recently. Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 reportedly carries roughly a 2.3 kWh pack and manages about two hours of dynamic work, while Unitree's H1 runs a smaller 0.864 kWh pack good for under four hours of largely static operation - a useful illustration of how battery size and workload type both drive runtime.

[scott21]

I don't think that's quite right, for what it's worth. Battery placement (torso-centered vs backpack vs distributed through the limbs) is a real tradeoff between center-of-mass/balance considerations and thermal/cooling access - a torso-centered pack helps balance but is harder to cool than a more exposed backpack placement. Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 reportedly carries roughly a 2.3 kWh pack and manages about two hours of dynamic work, while Unitree's H1 runs a smaller 0.864 kWh pack good for under four hours of largely static operation - a useful illustration of how battery size and workload type both drive runtime.

[kwilliams]

@scott21 From what I've seen: 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 safety rather than a purpose-built humanoid standard. This whole thread is a good reminder how young this field still is.

[scott21]

Minor factual note: 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.

[choi98]

I'll believe the stronger version of that claim when it's independently verified. Best-in-class lithium-ion cells used in humanoids are currently landing around 280-300 Wh/kg, which is respectable but still leaves battery mass as one of the largest single contributors to total robot weight.

[servoken70]

@choi98 From hands-on experience, Regenerative braking on humanoid joints can recover some energy during deceleration phases of walking, but the actual energy recovered is modest compared to a vehicle, since humanoid joints don't sustain the same continuous high-speed rotation that makes regen worthwhile in EVs. Distributed power architectures (multiple smaller packs or local capacitor buffering near high-draw actuators) can reduce peak current demands on the main bus and improve fault isolation, at the cost of added complexity versus a single central pack. Reminds me a bit of the early drone hobbyist scene, honestly.