https://youtube.com/watch?v=MwIBTbumd1Q
Eight months ago he built a quadrupedal robot that could step sideways using three of them per leg. I’m not going to link that, you’ll have to find it from his YouTube page because you should look around.
During the COVID period, some Chinese companies even sold variants of actuators inspired by the Mini Cheetah design.
Aaed Musa has also mentioned in some of his videos that his actuator designs were inspired by the Mini Cheetah actuator. Yes, His capstan drive video is especially impressive.
For example, in Aaed Musa’s video "I Built a Rubik's Cube Solving Robot" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0bMMALYMYk), he states in the description that the design was inspired by Ben Katz’s work.
Ben Katz master thesis, is worth reading: "A low cost modular actuator for dynamic robots" 2018 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/118671 and also has a good post https://robot-daycare.com/posts/2019-12-16-the-mini-cheetah-...
And also, The Rubik's Contraption (2018), 297 points, the work done by same author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561049
Ben's vids were kind of mind-blowing for me at that time. I couldn't believe some of the control that was possible with relatively pedestrian electronics. Aaed's vids do a wonderful job of making it accessible in an applied way.
It's something I think a lot of the folks on HN would find interesting to tinker with. Nice mix of software and hardware that actually does work in physical reality. It also gives me a level of appreciation for the advances in humanoid robots that I don't think I would have had otherwise. (If you *do* get into it, I'd highly recommend getting into field oriented control with brushless motors and encoders. Small hobby servos are fun but they encapsulate a lot of the interesting parts and tend to have limited options available for things like the capstan vid linked above)
https://youtube.com/@Jeremy_Fielding
If you pay attention to Smarter Every Day videos he’s occasionally in the background, which makes me suspect he’s still active but doing behind the scenes stuff and less in his garage.
In a driven system the dead zone is graphable and that deadzone time or area does not change based on velocity, A lack of rigidity in couplings, gears or belts IS affected by velocity
Aaed I believe is preloading his devices, which should eliminate most of the remaining give but also increase wear rate. Though it sounds like from the video that the biggest problem is rubbing the cord against itself, hence the channels to guide the cords.