This is my real life terminator/Data from Star Trek/Westworld type humanoid robots project. It is a long term project. I plan to post updates occasionally to share my progress and seek feedback, suggestions, advice, etc.

Here is a CAD image of my Abel robot which shows the little BLDC motors I selected for each muscle replacement and mounted in CAD everywhere space allowed for it.  There is nearly a 1:1 ratio of motors to muscles of a human body in this CAD.  Although some muscles were so strong I used more than one motor to replicate its strength. 

I plan to do most of the electronics custom - so custom microcontrollers, custom motor controllers, custom power supply, custom battery management system, custom sensor support circuitry, etc.  I am a electronics beginner so guidance on these parts is welcomed.

The bot will have silicone skin and look realistic and move realistic. It will have artificial lungs for cooling. It will have spandex ligaments and cable drive systems to imitate muscles. It will have sensors to feel if it bumps into things and it will have cameras inside its realistic looking eyes. It will have a speaker in the mouth to speak with and the mouth will move to lipsync what it is saying. It will have facial expressions. It will have advanced artificial intelligence. It will run on battery and/or power cable depending on the situation.

My primary focus at my current progression is building the arm for the Abel robot.  I am using a off the shelf PVC medical skeleton as the basis framework of the arm.  I have added artificial ligaments made of workout shirt fabric and bone sleeves made of 1000 denier nylon fabric taped onto the bones with adhesive transfer tape and also sewn tightly around the bone for a snug fit.  I then am able to suture all components onto these bone sleeves using nylon upholstery thread and a curved suturing needle. 

During the project's last 10 years of development, I have mainly done large amounts of research and planning as well as trial and error.  Making plans, attempting to implement them, and finding out why they did not work.  These setbacks were a form a failing forward, learning what not to do and narrowing down my options over time.  For example, I ruled out using geared servomotors because gears are loud and having the motor and gears assembled together with the circuit board and potentiometer all crammed into a little black box was not space efficient, as far as form factor goes, for placing these assemblies into the robot's available spaces where muscles would normally be.  I just wouldn't be able to fit many of these.  So I needed to elongate and stretch out the form factor by mounting the motor, downgear, and circuitboards separately, spreading out each of these components of a servo.  I also did not like the massive amounts of gear noises that metal geared servos give off.  So I needed to find a way to downgear motors without using gears.  That led me down a rabbit hole of learning to downgear by way of pulleys which can be silent and robust if done well IMO.  The general idea is to have the motor output shaft act as a winch to reel in strong braided PE fishing line which then will be downgeared by a pulley system just like a crane uses or similar to downgear its cables.  Then after downgearing the fishing line will have the proper torque and speed to actuate the joint it is assigned to.  By copying the skeletal arrangement of the human body exactly, I am also able to copy the position, strength,and orientation of the muscles of the human body exactly to reproduce their function on the skeleton of my robot.  This way I'm using a proven successful design, the human body, to ensure the success of my bio inspired design.  Developing this pulley system has been much harder than I anticipated and the space it takes up is tough to accommodate.  I am uncertain it will work and so once again am just in the trial and error testing phase. 

Here is a image of the right hand curling the index finger.