Development of robot leg composed of parallel linkage and elastic spring for dynamic locomotion

Musculoskeletal structures in many animals are flexible, which are very important to achieve dynamic locomotion such as running and jumping. For this reason, in recent research of robotics, elastic element is introduced in robot structure in order to improve dynamic performance of robots. In this paper, we propose a robot leg composed of parallel linkage and elastic tension spring. A prototype of the leg has been developed and it is evaluated by jumping simulations and experiments. As results of the experiments, higher and more efficient jumping is realized by the proposed leg comparing to the leg without elastic spring.