Model-Based Elastic Tendon Control for Electrically Actuated Musculoskeletal Bipeds

Abstract

Human-inspired musculoskeletal design of bipedal robots oers great potential towards enhanced dynamic and energy-ecient locomotion but imposes also major challenges on their control. In this paper we present an analytical model-based controller that takes into account the system's complex musculoskeletal actuation dynamics in order to fully exploit the intrinsic dynamics. The eectiveness of the proposed approach is evaluated for hopping-in-place motions on the simulation model of the BioBiped1 robot, a human-inspired musculoskeletal biped featuring a highly compliant tendon-driven actuation system.