Development of an antagonistic bionic joint controller for a musculoskeletal quadruped

Abstract

In this paper, a joint control algorism was proposed to implement on our musculoskeletal robot. The joints are all actuated by pneumatic muscles and have antagonistic structure. In order to gain a better performance, we first modeled the pneumatic muscle, and then considering the dynamics two control method was discussed and compared. As a tradeoff of rapidity and accuracy, the combined joint control algorism was implemented on the robot system. The algorism could tune the stiffness of the joint automatically to fit the compliance need for joint control. The experiments on our robot showed that the joint control algorism could operate the robot with a fast and accurate response. There is nearly not lagging behind, and with a small overshot during the step testing, and a complex leg's trajectory was also achieved through our joint controller.