QUEST FOR ACTUATORS: GOAT Robot Leg Demonstrates Explosive Jumping

“Gearless Omni-directional Acceleration-vectoring Topology.”
GOAT

CMU researchers have developed a new robot leg that delivered 20 joules in jumping experiments, achieving a height of 82 centimeters, or more than double its body height.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/goat-robot-leg-demonstrates-explosive-jumping  

They used 3 motors and Gear boxes to make a delta robot capable of Jumping and absorbing the landing. 

T Motor, U10 KV80  $329.9

http://store-en.tmotor.com/goods.php?id=360  

With

Matex's Sintered Metal gear 7:1 

https://www.matexgears.com/sintered-metal-planetary-gears?page=product&cid=steel-planetary-gears&id=75-7mld  

Project HoverArm, using high torque Hoverboard motors for robotics applications.

https://discourse.odriverobotics.com/t/project-hoverarm/441/2

Hoverboard motors were already mentioned by @zwn in this thread several months ago, and recently I started looking into using them myself, and there are a few others over on the ODrive discord (specifically @beak90) who are also interested.

The first thing to note about these motors is that they are mass produced in large qantities, and they have enough torque to direct-drive a human, and humans are heavy. This means we can expect that it has a good torque-to-price ratio. Turns out, nope, it actually has a ridiculous torque-to-price ratio.