> Where did they get a shaft encoder with over a million counts per rev? they use about 200 tick encoders, but instead of measuring on or off they measure light

> Where did they get a shaft encoder with over a million counts per rev? they use about 200 tick encoders, but instead of measuring on or off they measure light intensity. Because each encoder slot has a bit of variation they get absolute positioning.[0] This is what their FPGAs are for. As for the reason this robot is so expensive, the inconel harmonic drive gear boxes are probably a good portion of the cost. Harmonic drives aren't made in big production runs. The assembly instructions are somewhat horrifying and involve quite a bit of manual labor.[1] There's a lot of cutting carbon fiber rod and gluing it into the 3d printed bits. The horrifying bit is that you have to glue stuff to the motors and it appears that some assemblies aren't exactly made to come apart. [0]https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/wiki/Encoders https://github.com/HaddingtonDynamics/Dexter/wiki/Encoders [1]http://hdrobotic.com/dexter-v1-assembly-manual/ http://hdrobotic.com/dexter-v1-assembly-manual/