How much does actuator choice actually determine a robot's max payload?

[camila.jackson0]

Speaking from personal experience here, Backdrivability is the property that lets an external force move a joint without destroying the gearbox or the motor - it's central to both safe human-robot contact and to letting a leg comply naturally when the robot stumbles.

[sharonschmidt]

@camila.jackson0 This matches something I went through recently. Cycloidal drives are a less common but real alternative to harmonic drives - lower cost at high ratios, decent efficiency, but historically bulkier for the same torque density, which is part of why they haven't fully displaced harmonic drives in commercial hips and knees. Kind of makes me think about how different this all looked even three years ago.

[barbara.jones]

@sharonschmidt Just to be precise about one thing: Backdrivability is the property that lets an external force move a joint without destroying the gearbox or the motor - it's central to both safe human-robot contact and to letting a leg comply naturally when the robot stumbles. Encoder resolution requirements scale with how tightly you need to control low-speed motion - coarse encoders are fine for open-loop swing phases but cause visible stutter during precise placement or fine force control.