Anyone building a smaller quadruped first to learn before attempting a biped?

[forgesve15]

Respectfully, I think this undersells it a bit. 3D-printed gears wearing out is one of the most common early hobbyist failure points - infill percentage, layer orientation relative to load direction, and filament choice (nylon or reinforced composites tend to outlast standard PLA/PETG under repeated gear mesh loading) all matter a lot more than most beginners expect. Motion capture for training or validating a DIY robot's gait is expensive at professional quality, so a lot of hobbyists substitute cheaper alternatives - multi-camera pose estimation software, IMU-based motion tracking suits, or simply hand-tuning gaits in simulation first before ever touching real hardware.

[emma_whit]

Can I ask a dumb follow-up - 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. 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.

[lperez]

Small correction on one detail: 3D-printed gears wearing out is one of the most common early hobbyist failure points - infill percentage, layer orientation relative to load direction, and filament choice (nylon or reinforced composites tend to outlast standard PLA/PETG under repeated gear mesh loading) all matter a lot more than most beginners expect.

[kim37]

Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. 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.

[rao91]

@kim37 Thanks for laying this out, genuinely useful. Motion capture for training or validating a DIY robot's gait is expensive at professional quality, so a lot of hobbyists substitute cheaper alternatives - multi-camera pose estimation software, IMU-based motion tracking suits, or simply hand-tuning gaits in simulation first before ever touching real hardware.