Building a legged robot in 80 days
As someone with an EE background, it surprised me that something with such a meticulous mechanical design had a comparatively amateurish set of electronics that seemed to be cobbled together out of a mix of hobbyist parts.At day 0, they could likely have found an SBC with native CAN and RS-485 (or just used a UART to 485 converter), and enough USB ports for the sensors, which would have simplified the design a lot.  A different battery controller or a few capacitors likely could have managed the "power surges" as well.