Acrobotics

As an intellectual exercise, I think this sounds great!  I wish you all the luck.

... and I don't like being a cold bucket of water, but... have you considered the state of the art?  If you know how to design and fabricate the chassis using use carbon-fiber composites for all the structure and used only the best/lightest actuators (servos and/or stepper motors) in the world, could you build something as you propose?  The batteries alone to power it for more than two minutes would likely weigh over a hundred pounds.  

Considering that the state of the art, Boston Dynamics' robot is probably not as fluid and smooth as you would need, it must weigh close to a thousand pounds.  Throwing it around is simply not an option.

Besides... dancing with a limber, 90 pound gymnast has other benefits.  😎 

Posted by: @hapiel

Quick question though: Can one receive email notifications for threads? I click 'subscribe to topic' every time, but in my profile it says I'm subscribed to no topics, and I don't receive any emails...

That's all for now, enjoy!

I found it odd as no other forum I haunt requires it; however, on this forum, checking the 'subscribe to topic' sends a confirmation email to you that must be acknowledged before you are subscribed... even to your own threads and posts. 

@inq And that's not the only odd behaviour of this forum, it doesn't even do threading properly. I am used to (as in this case) replying to a specific post and when the other person is (automatically) notified of an update he/she sees it outdented below his/her post, no need to quote or copy the original, it is perfectly obvious what I am responding to. Very unproductive to be constantly quoting unless you are the author of the forum software and also selling storage space.

Thanks for your reply @inq !

Don't worry, I think you're grossly overestimating the complexity of this project. This robot does not need to do even 1% of what a boston dynamics bot can do. It does not need to walk, it does not need to even stand, it just needs to be able to raise its arms, hold its position tightly, and it needs to be big. All of the balancing and finetuning can be done by me, with my human physical abilities to correct for any of its imperfections. Remember that each limb will only have a single revolving joint!

Maybe the legs can rotate too. We'll see. Here is an updated model:

Regarding the thread subscriptions: I never even receive that confirmation email. I've even changed my email address in my profile to try it differently. It's not going to spam either. Weird and annoying 🙁

It's been a while! But it's a thing! It has not done all the things I wanted it to do, but quite a few of the things work in the end.

Have a peek here!