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CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

aaedmusa.com

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Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#71

Post by taneq »

Paddywack wrote: post #35
taneq wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arduinos and hobby servos. No, neither of them are "industrial grade" and yeah, you'll reach their limits pretty quickly, but building a physical thing that does stuff is (in my experience) a huge motivator. Or if you're already all over the basics, figure out what kind of stuff you want to build and then try and build it. :)

Can you recommend where to find beginners projects that “do stuff”.

https://hackaday.com/ - cool projects and interesting stuff https://news.sparkfun.com/tags/tutorial - tutorials on embedded software, electronics, etc. https://learn.adafruit.com/ - electronics tutorials

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#72

Post by godelski »

Lerc wrote: post #30
btbuildem wrote: post #3

I've watched and re-watched Aaed's videos on the capstan drive, it's great stuff. High speed, high torque, compliance, effectively no backlash. It's fascinating to watch a legit engineering mind at work.

I recently found his videos also. It's one of those things that gets my mind bubbling with ideas for things I want to make, never enough time to do them all though (and this breadboard beside me is asking for attention) It does make me wonder about the algorithm, Quite a lot of things I find on Youtube turn up on HN a week or two later. I'm not sure if this is an indicator of the effectiveness or failure of the algor…

  > It does make me wonder about the algorithm
IIRC he uses a pretty simple algorithm. I remember him discussing the gating mechanism and how he had it follow a cycloid. I think there's a lot of opportunities for others to optimize the algorithms and he is focused on the physical engineering side. I'd love to see him collaborating with someone who does more reinforcement leaning. I also think it's very impressive what he achieves with such simplified algorithms.

If I'm misremembering or missed something please correct me. I'm out now but I'll try to find the video of him talking about gating when I'm back if someone hasn't already linked it.

Also, I love how YouTube has all these "small" creators doing extremely impressive stuff. It's a real shame the algorithms make discovery challenging. The beauty of something like YouTube is not about just getting something to watch, it's by being able to get access to any content. Search is always a difficult problem to solve but I'm afraid it's currently over optimizing for views rather than intent. Which, to be fair, is much harder to measure. But I say over optimized because frequently I can search the title with 90% accuracy and fail to find the video. Something minor like missing an "s" or something effectively non meaningful. It's extremely frustrating...

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#73

Post by dismalpedigree »

busymom0 wrote: post #43
dvt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely makes more money, too!

His current Patreon has 57 paid members. Unless he has another revenue stream, I think he'd need more paid members.

He is a senior mechanical engineering student at purdue. I think the channel is something he is just getting rolling in his spare time.

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#74

Post by 8note »

godelski wrote: post #72
Lerc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently found his videos also. It's one of those things that gets my mind bubbling with ideas for things I want to make, never enough time to do them all though (and this breadboard beside me is asking for attention) It does make me wonder about the algorithm, Quite a lot of things I find on Youtube turn up on HN a week or two later. I'm not sure if this is an indicator of the effectiveness or failure of the algor…

> It does make me wonder about the algorithm IIRC he uses a pretty simple algorithm. I remember him discussing the gating mechanism and how he had it follow a cycloid. I think there's a lot of opportunities for others to optimize the algorithms and he is focused on the physical engineering side. I'd love to see him collaborating with someone who does more reinforcement leaning. I also think it's very impressive what…

the algorithm in question is youtube's for how its getting to all the HN users at about the same time. i was also suggested this same video a few days back

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#76

Post by geerlingguy »

abtinf wrote: post #46
geerlingguy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many, no; taking on lots of sponsorships, you can make a good amount of money (especially the ones where you agree to do X posts across Y social media accounts for Z period of time, essentially being fully sponsored across a large swath of life). But for a lot of tech/engineering channels, it'd be immensely difficult to make the same salary as you could working at a FAANG or the like. (I'm making about half what…

Do fun projects of your choosing vs the grind of corporate life. The former has a rather large non-pecuniary component of total compensation.

Exactly; especially in terms of stress—which is a major problem with my chronic illness, and both the main reason I'm happy to be away from a W-2, but also the thing that makes me most nervous as I'm dependent on marketplace healthcare (which is quite expensive for much worse benefits), and it's harder to get things like life/disability insurance as an independent.

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#77

Post by godelski »

8note wrote: post #74
godelski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does make me wonder about the algorithm IIRC he uses a pretty simple algorithm. I remember him discussing the gating mechanism and how he had it follow a cycloid. I think there's a lot of opportunities for others to optimize the algorithms and he is focused on the physical engineering side. I'd love to see him collaborating with someone who does more reinforcement leaning. I also think it's very impressive what…

the algorithm in question is youtube's for how its getting to all the HN users at about the same time. i was also suggested this same video a few days back

My post discussed two algorithms: the gating algo for CARA[0] and the search algorithm for YouTube.

If I'm reading your comment accurately, you're mentioning the discovery algorithm, which is neither of these. I also got the video, but I was already subscribed (it was suggested to me when it was released). Yes, the discovery algorithm has some of these issues but I'm more understanding of that because it's a much harder problem.

Both have self inflicted problems and I think they can be more easily addressed:

Discovery over optimizes to recent views and can get stuck in certain genres[1]. There is also a strong preference to things average user enjoys which doesn't work well for those of us who are only slightly less schizophrenic than the algorithm itself. Too much exploitation, not enough exploration (I wish this was a setting I could adjust. My mood changes, how can I let the algorithm know?)

Search has two critical self inflicted problems.

1) after about 5 results it will suggest completely unrelated videos (looks like it hands off to the discovery feed). Sometimes I need page two... just fucking show me more...

2) the problem I mentioned previously, where it distrusts you prioritizing popular videos over a trivial spelling or grammatical error. Google search has this exact same problem.

[0] my dumbass didn't check which video was linked. It's this one where he discusses it. At 12:30 in the video

[1] this leads me to having tons of YouTube tabs open as I'm unsure if a video I'm interested in but don't have the current bandwidth for is never going to be shown to me again

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#78

Post by numpad0 »

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote: post #5

There is a weird mixture of hope and dread in me as I watch this. I am ridiculously excited over a person like me being able to mess around with something that, until recently, was gated behind, well, a lot of hard problems to overcome ( I am only now slowly getting through old Peter Scott's robotics to get some perspective ). By comparison, it should be so much easier to explore aspects of robotics that may go beyon…

Gated how? It's all on textbooks, industry standards, Internet, everywhere. You could buy a KHR-3 without even driver's license for $1.5k cash for past ~20 years. I guess CUDA was technically gated behind "I swear I'm not a bad guy" button, but that was it.

I'm surprised that Ukraine isn't DIYing full-on solid motor cluster SAMs and armor piercing ATGMs. I thought those kinds of devices were something just about any sufficiently developed country can do in days to weeks should such national emergency arises and all bets were off, except nations in peacetime has moral obligations to do no evil.

Re: CARA – High precision robot dog using rope

#80

Post by salomonk_mur »

abtinf wrote: post #48
AIorNot wrote: post #8

Amazing presentation! - somebody hire this kid asap https://www.aaedmusa.com/

That would be a terrible path for someone with this extreme level of demonstrated talent, motivation, and follow-through. Much better for someone to fund a startup run by him.

Why would you put someone with clear talent at building stuff in charge of running a startup? He'll get bogged down in lawyers, day to day operations and growth strategies.

Hire him and put him in R&D in some robotics company.

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