BD used hydraulics for a long time. Works, but inefficient. You have to carry the actuators, the tank, probably a hydraulic accumulator, the pump, valves, and the power source for the pump. That's why BD's machines were so big. Someone at Google said "We need to have a conversation about hydraulics", and the dog robot in 2019 was the first all-electric machine.
replyplenty BD clips of old atlas include oil lines bursting and showing the room with oil.
replyit's indeed a mess.
BD was under business pressures, and a computerized automaton doing baked ninja back-flips with servos is more impressive than inexpensive FK/IK demos dead-lifting 1000lbs. Google broke that company with their opinions.
replyEven if private labs have a viable platform solution, people won't care unless they can clone it for free. Not a lot of incentive for design change, but building Kryten 2X4B-523P would be hilarious. =3
overclocking a CPU might make it seem that you solved something and gotten better performance, but sooner or later it breaks down, as I read the article I believe that pre-computation essentially allows you to "overclock" the hardware, and make it seem that you have solved the problem of locomotion when what you have actually done is made something that looks impressive for a very much shorter of time than is usually used to calculate what the hardware can bear.
replyon edit: apologies if my analogy is not the best.