A study on trunk stiffness and gait stability in quadrupedal locomotion using musculoskeletal robot

Author

Tsujita, Katsuyoshi ; Miki, Kenji

Author_Institution

Dept. of Biomed. Eng., Osaka Inst. of Technol., Osaka, Japan

fYear

2011

fDate

20-23 June 2011

Firstpage

316

Lastpage

321

Abstract

In this study, a feasibility study on the stability of gait patterns with changeable body stiffness is reported. The periodic motions of the legs are generated as a rhyhmic motion. The stability of locomotion strongly depends on the mechanical properties of the body mechanism, especially the joint stiffness. In this report, the muscle tone of the robot motion at the trunk is changeable by using the changeable elasticity of the pneumatic actuators. The stability of quadruped locomotion in crawl, trot and pace patterns with changeable body stiffness was evaluated with hardware experiments.

Keywords

elastic constants; elasticity; legged locomotion; motion control; stability; body mechanism; changeable body stiffness; changeable elasticity; gait pattern stability; gait stability; hardware experiment; musculoskeletal robot; pace pattern; periodic leg motion; pneumatic actuator; quadrupedal locomotion; rhyhmic motion; robot motion muscle tone; trunk stiffness; Actuators; Dynamics; Generators; Joints; Legged locomotion; Pneumatic systems;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Advanced Robotics (ICAR), 2011 15th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Tallinn

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1158-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICAR.2011.6088641

Filename

6088641