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well behaved arms...
If possible, we always try to make our arm "neutral balanced" in some orientation (say horizontal) so that gravity and our counterbalance just equal eachother out at that point.
If you do this, your robot's motor does not have to do any work to keep your arm in that position. Basically, you turn off the motors and, low and behold, the arm stays put.
It is not impossible to make a well behaved robot arm without an effective counterbalance, but it is MUCH more difficult (for instance, you can add a "gravity" term to your motor output to try to have the motors automatically add more output when gravity is putting more torque into your robot arm).
But... ...the bottom line is that clever software has a much more difficult time dealing with gravity than a few yards of latex tubing judiciously wrapped around your robot arm.
We have done this for years and have never had any safety issues.
I hope that many of you will join me in seeking to have counterbalance return to the legal side of the rules.
Joe J.
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