> [...] Dexter appears to be treating each step as a discrete unit, where it has to attain balance at the end of one step before going on to the next step I do

> [...] Dexter appears to be treating each step as a discrete unit, where it has to attain balance at the end of one step before going on to the next step I doubt that. I don't think that would qualify as dynamic balance. Remember, it's only been a couple of weeks since Dexter's first step -- he's walking quite well. This is one of those situations where the approach bounds the eventual utility. There are a lot of non-dynamically balanced robots that would just blow the minds of researchers from 20 years ago, but they are still limited. By solving the dynamic balance problem, even though to the untrained eye it may currently look less impressive than some other systems, there's no more ceiling to what it can do, dynamically (control-wise, not accounting for power density). All of the behaviours you mentioned can be implemented on top of this substrate.