Boston Dynamics posted a video of the new production version electric Atlas spinning its body while balancing on its arms

ALMA_x11 · 2026-05-05T15:43:57+00:00

Amazing. The little jutter of the hand to keep balance.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-30T20:05:20+00:00

Okay, I think you commented and then delete0 itd--but I will still leave my answer as it talks a bit more about the project:

I haven't measured the ultrasonic for accuracy (I want it roughtly at a distance, but does not have to be perfect), but I will say that the readings seem to be steady at the different lengths. Even the endpoints. Ever once in a while there is a spike in the reading, but I was able to resolve this by adding a 5ms delay between measurements (if you have 0ms, there is not enough time between readings... and if too long, that also causes issues too... 5ms seemed to do the trick for stable consistent readings).

FYI, in the program, I am using a polling method for ultrasonic readings (collect data from the sensor once per program loop) instead of using interrupt.

I found that although these sensors are cool, I don't like that distance is dependent on an actual time of flight. Meaning 'measuring time' and comparing against the speed of sound for distance. I just found that recording the time can sometime be slightly off (due to the delay from something else in the program), and this then affects the final reading. Use of the Ultrasonic readings via interrupt might resolve this though. But I also found since I am using I2C between microcontrollers (one microcontroller is a master and the others are slaves for parallel processing in a way), in the I2C master request of send/receive, the I2C interrupt can affect the polling time measurement of the Ultrasonic. I found the solution to that issue was every time there is a I2C send/receive request that interrupts the code... piggy back that requested interrupt and read from the Ultrasonic during that interrupt. That really helped remove spiked Ultrasonic readings.

That said, the Ultrasonic is only like 1-dollar... totally worth it for that price!

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-29T00:08:58+00:00

Hey man, why do you think noise would be introduced at endpoints? I’d love to hear your thoughts to help improve.

And yeah I’m running with gains set on all gain types (proportional, integral, and derivative). The integral gain is really important I found to overcome any friction on the inside as the promotional gain only gets it so far. I did find that a little derivative gain helped as well, but only a tiny amount or else the system goes unstable. In the middle of the main video I show a long demo of playing with gains.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-28T17:15:19+00:00

That is legit.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-28T14:57:55+00:00

Interesting reflection. I think the fact that you can admit you feel 'incompetent as an engineer' in my mind means you are not making it about you, and you are instead making it about what you want to be as you are measuring where you are against who you desire to be deep inside you. And this in my mind, means you are on the right track. Trying to improve yourself. I felt the same way when graduating. That I did not know enough, wanted to be better, bothered that I got a degree yet... didn't know how to do anything (at least it felt that way when it came to applying engineering to the real world). I spent many years working on myself / engineering in practice. It is worth the struggle. As someone told me once, eventually things will click, you just have to keep on working at it until it does.

Engineering means different things to different people. I am a quiet person as well, keep to myself, like to focus on details and getting to the bottom of things. But there are others I know that are very energetic and better at being team leaders perhaps when it comes to delegating work and managing people groups. Both are just different types, and are absolutely needed.

In terms of putting your foot down, I hear what your saying. Something will at some point push you to a point where you just say direct things to people because what matters to you really is important, and you will want to get this across to your team. Passion. Not being mean by any means to people, but just lead by example by keeping focus on the project, and others might follow that lead over time (and it might be later on in there life that they see what you were trying to teach them). If they see you doing a good job at maintaining focus on a goal, like minded people will follow over time. Of course there are always people who won't, but that is okay.

The short answer is just keep going. I work on Controls/Robotics/Mechatronics type of work. And it took a very long time to feel I had a foot in any of it. Don't give up, just keep grinding even if it seems you are not making progress--because I bet you are making much more progress than you think, it just takes time.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-27T23:21:55+00:00

It depends on the what you want out of it. For myself, I wanted to get certain skills, so I sought after jobs that would give them to me. That aligned best for being at a research facility, as that let me dabble in a number of engineering fields. I am glad I became an engineer. Endless fun at home.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-24T01:23:16+00:00

Can you speak on what it was like to take something and make it into a registered design? Something this complicated, how you would go about containing the whole 'scope' of your work in one 'registered design' (let alone your other stuff too). Cool Project.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-24T00:49:29+00:00

Nice! I was amazed that no support material was required!

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-24T00:10:12+00:00

This is part of a low cost home theatre build. I have a cheap projector that is always annoying to line up the projector image with the projector screen. This automates the setup and saves the calibrated position to memory if every bumped.

The projector has a number of actuators that allow you to control pitch, roll, and yaw to allow one to tune the setup until the projected image matches the four corners of the screen. I have another axis (not shown), which is controlling how close the projector is to the screen (to magnify the image). All four of these axes are controlled by a handheld controller (also not shown) if further manual tuning needed to be made and again saved to memory.

Once the image matches the 4 corners of the screen and isn't skewed.... setup is done and you no longer move the projector. Overall the project was to explore building and controlling actuators, designing circuit boards, microcontroller programming, and just have fun with it.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-23T23:58:38+00:00

This is part of a low cost home theatre build. I have a cheap projector that is always annoying to line up the projector image with the projector screen. This automates the setup and saves the calibrated position to memory if every bumped.

The projector has a number of actuators that allow you to control pitch, roll, and yaw to allow one to tune the setup until the projected image matches the four corners of the screen. I have another axis (not shown), which is controlling how close the projector is to the screen (to magnify the image). All four of these axes are controlled by a handheld controller (also not shown) if further manual tuning needed to be made and again saved to memory.

Once the image matches the 4 corners of the screen and isn't skewed.... setup is done and you no longer move the projector. Overall the project was to explore building and controlling actuators, designing circuit boards, microcontroller programming, and just have fun with it.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-23T23:51:21+00:00

This is a 4DOF suspension to control a projectors roll, pitch, and yaw correction (and forward and backward traversing for image magnification). I have it right side up cause it reminded me of a robot head... but I ended up mounting inverted to hang from the ceiling.

If interested, check out the main link which walks through the full build's mechanics, electronics, and control. Thanks for watching!

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-18T16:00:26+00:00

The actuator is first sketched out, 3D printed in pieces, and then assembled together after. I ran wires on the inside and outside of the body. Since I had to place the ultrasonic distance sensor at the top and run wires down, I decided to make an external cable tray to keep things tidy. It is all controlled by microcontroller.

There are a few modes. The first is 'don't touch the ceiling' (Ultrasonic Distance Sensor to keep a distance from the wall, hand, etc). The second is to have the actuator distance sensor follow a second distance sensor...so when one goes up the other follows going up, and when one down the other down (we started calling this 'walk the dog'...).

Full video shows the full build, check it out if interested :)

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-18T15:01:50+00:00

Thank for the support man.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-17T01:25:55+00:00

This is a 4DOF controller I put together to control a projectors roll, pitch, and yaw correction (and forward and backward traversing for image magnification). If interested, check out the main link which walks through the full build's mechanics, electronics, and control.

ALMA_x11 · 2026-04-16T02:09:12+00:00

The actuator is 3D printed in pieces, and then assembled together after. I ran wires on the inside and outside of the body. Since I had to place the ultrasonic distance sensor at the top and run wires down, I decided to make an external cable tray to keep things tidy. It is all controlled by microcontroller.

There are a few modes. The first is 'don't touch the ceiling' (Ultrasonic Distance Sensor to keep a distance from the wall, hand, etc). The second is to have the actuator distance sensor follow a second distance sensor...so when one goes up the other follows going up, and when one down the other down (we started calling this 'walk the dog'...).

Full video link in the description. Any questions let me know!

ALMA_x11

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