DIEES Biped Robot: A bio-inspired Pneumatic Platform for Human Locomotion Analysis and Stiffness Control.

The paper describes the kinematics and kinetic properties of a ten degrees of freedom biologically inspired biped robot. The prototype realized is pneumatically actuated, and the leg size and dimensions have been designed in order to be anthropomorphic. Moreover, the control strategy has been specifically designed in order to generate a different force and position control strategy acting on the stance and the swing leg respectively. A three-level feedback loop controller allows generation of a three-dimensional trajectory for the swing leg directly referred to the operative space. Besides, a set of forces acting directly on the foot contact surface are generated during the stance phase, in order to better exploit the elasticity properties of the pneumatic actuators