Sharing video of my robot's first 10 steps (fell on step 11, still counts)

[deborahperez]

@servoken70 Slight correction, though the overall point stands: Sourcing small, precise harmonic drives as an individual hobbyist is genuinely difficult - most manufacturers focus on industrial customers with large order volumes, which is why a fair number of DIY builds substitute cycloidal drives, planetary gearboxes, or belt-reduction stages instead. Building a scoped-down project first - a single leg, an arm, or a torso-only upper body - is a common and sensible way to learn the mechanical and control fundamentals before committing to the cost and complexity of a full bipedal platform.

[dchen]

This matches something I went through recently. A first successful unassisted walk, from a standing start on a from-scratch project, commonly takes many months of part-time weekend work even for someone with a solid mechanical and software background - it's a genuinely hard milestone, not a weekend project.

[emilyperez]

@dchen This is exactly the kind of context I was looking for. Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch. Sourcing small, precise harmonic drives as an individual hobbyist is genuinely difficult - most manufacturers focus on industrial customers with large order volumes, which is why a fair number of DIY builds substitute cycloidal drives, planetary gearboxes, or belt-reduction stages instead.

[sharonschmidt]

That's the official framing, at least - reality tends to lag a bit. Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch. Jetson-class boards remain a common choice for onboard compute on hobbyist builds needing real vision or learned-policy inference, while a Raspberry Pi is often adequate for lower-level joint control and telemetry if the heavier compute is offloaded to a base station.

[scott.andersson5]

Short answer: Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.

[emilyperez]

Yeah, this tracks with what I've read as well. Joining an existing robotics community (FRC, university clubs, maker spaces) before going fully solo is a common and effective way to pick up practical fabrication and control skills faster than working entirely alone from tutorials.

[yuki71]

Sorry if this is a basic question, but Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch.

[servoken70]

@yuki71 From what I've seen: Starting in simulation (even a simplified physics sim of just the leg or the target gait) before touching real hardware is one of the more reliable ways to avoid destroying expensive parts while debugging balance and walking control from scratch. 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.

[chloe_jack]

To answer this directly: UC Berkeley's Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a genuinely open-source, roughly $5,000, 3D-printable humanoid - structural parts print on a standard desktop printer (around a 200x200x200mm build volume), with CAD files, parts lists, assembly instructions, and control code all published for hobbyists to replicate.

[matthew43]

@chloe_jack Genuinely curious - UC Berkeley's Berkeley Humanoid Lite is a genuinely open-source, roughly $5,000, 3D-printable humanoid - structural parts print on a standard desktop printer (around a 200x200x200mm build volume), with CAD files, parts lists, assembly instructions, and control code all published for hobbyists to replicate. The Berkeley Humanoid Lite stands about 1 meter tall and weighs roughly 16 kg, which is a genuinely reasonable target size for a first serious hobbyist build - big enough to be a real bipedal platform, small enough to not need industrial-scale actuators or a huge budget.