Best actuator failure story you've personally witnessed or caused?

[kwilliams]

@sharonschmidt One nitpick - 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.

[emilyperez]

Small correction on one detail: Series elastic actuators add a spring element in series with the drivetrain, which gives cheap, precise torque sensing (measure spring deflection) and passive shock absorption, at the cost of reduced control bandwidth and added complexity. 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.

[dubois35]

@emilyperez This matches what I've seen too. Quasi-direct drive (QDD) actuators use lower gear ratios (roughly 6:1 to 10:1) paired with high-torque-density motors, trading some peak force density for backdrivability and low reflected inertia, which matters a lot for impact tolerance and fall recovery.

[deborah59]

I'd push back on this a bit. For dynamic walking and recovery, joint control bandwidth in the tens of Hz range is typically necessary to react to a stumble before the center of mass gets too far outside the support polygon. Anyway, good thread - following for more.