more than 30 years ago I was writing code for a "robotic" device that used motors, directly on the joints.

the motors were so sloppy the company wasted a ton of money [0] having me write heuristics to tackle the errors they accumulated over several hours.

one of his whole points is that by using dyneema (rope), there's almost no elasticity at all in the capstans.

[0] relative to the cost of better motors