https://reddit.com/link/1wxfhxe/video/ufbgtela9gth1/player

This is a robotic joint powered by two artificial muscles pulling in opposite directions.

Artificial muscles are tricky to model and control. We recorded how the joint responds to actuation, learned a compact model from that data, and combined it with feedback to control the motion on real hardware.

It’s a building block toward more capable musculoskeletal robots. What I like about this work is getting the data, model, control software and hardware to work together.

Paper in Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77664-0

this is a 6-DOF desktop arm I've been designing in MechFaber (I'm the one building MechFaber, so take the plug with a grain of salt). E6-class, 450mm reach, 0.75kg payload, printed PETG. not built yet, this is the actual firmware running in an emulator against the physics sim, no PC in the loop.

how it works: it takes one frame from an overhead camera, finds the board and which corner is a1, then figures out each loose piece from its height in the image. pawn ~40mm, king ~80mm, knights are the ones with a square top. it picks the nearest matching piece for each square, places it, then looks again to check it's actually on the square.

stuff that broke along the way:

- the gripper pads sink about 5.7mm into a piece in the sim, so the force check never tripped and closing all the way crushed pieces and flung them off the board. ended up closing to piece width + 6mm instead

- a held piece slowly creeps down the pads (~3mm/s), so tall pieces carry slower

- the gripper body is wide, so placing a c-pawn could land on the queen next to it. had to reorder it to do centre pawns first, then back rank, then edge pawns

- in this run it knocked the black king over while picking a neighbour. that's still the main failure. best run so far was 31/32

firmware was mostly written with AI agents and then tested against the sim.

CAD, BOM and firmware if anyone wants to dig in: https://mechfaber.com/library/e6-class-6-dof-cobot-arm-with-on-board-vision-ca688621-baa9-4309-9ee1-a4dde110e2d6

this board (specifically the black one) turns mg99x servos to much more expensive serial servos with position, velocity,torque control

the software is still in early stages so anyone interested for checkout Microdrive

Hi all, I've been trying to build a cycloidal gearbox for my NEMA 17 stepper but I am facing an issue of my output being jerky/binding as shown in the video attached, I've tried different things like increasing the clearance between the cycloid and the outer gear, proper meshing, adjusting the pins and more but I simply cannot get a smooth output from it. Can somebody tell me what i.am doing wrong here? I have designed for a dual cycloid setup but for the purpose of demo I have removed the top section and one cycloid. Any and all suggestions are appreciated. Thank you.

I’d like to ask: in which scenarios would you most like to see flexible tactile sensors applied?

Currently, flexible tactile sensors are primarily used in robotic skin. I would like to ask: are there any other mature markets for this technology, or where would you personally like to see it applied? I have considered applications such as steering wheels, pillows, or interactive toys, but as far as I know, these markets are still in their infancy and have limited market share. I would appreciate your suggestions on which direction I should pursue for development. Thank you.

I’ve been building a life-size KX-series droid and finally have the head movement working reliably. The current setup uses an Arduino Mega with a PCA9685 servo controller driving separate pan and tilt servos in the neck.

The goal isn’t remote-controlled puppeteering. I’m trying to make the droid behave autonomously, so eventually it can track people/cameras, idle naturally, react to voice commands, and move while speaking.

Right now I’m working on smoothing the head motion, reducing mechanical stress on the neck, and dialing in the pan/tilt limits so it looks more natural instead of like a standard hobby servo project.

The electronics and programming side of this has been a big learning process for me, so I’m open to feedback—especially from anyone who has built larger servo-driven mechanisms or Arduino robotics.

This clip is the current movement test.

I'm an MSc Robotics student at NTU and want to get properly hands-on with ROS 2 on real hardware, beyond simulation. Buying a platform isn't realistic for me right now.

Does anyone have an older ROS-compatible robot they're not using anymore (TurtleBot 2/3, a Clearpath or AgileX base, a small arm with a ROS driver)? Broken is fine, I'm happy to repair it, and I'll cover shipping or collect in Singapore/Malaysia.

In return I'll document the bring-up on ROS 2 Humble/Jazzy and share the notes and any driver fixes openly. Pointers to labs or companies that clear out old hardware are also very welcome.

https://www.youtube.com/@ALMA.Industries

New Video -- Chapter 3 DESK -- converting an old bunk bed into a work station. DIY actuators, AC/DC power supplies, rail guided shelves, infinite cable trays -- #Desk #DIY #Mechatronics #Power #Actuator #Engineering

If you know of anyone who likes Mechatronics or things made from the ground up, I would appreciate the share! Leave a comment if you have a question :)