Base motions of muscle-driven robots for compositional action development

Abstract

This paper is concerned with a method of evolutionary action development for a type of robots whose joints are all driven by the artificial muscle based actuator: Strand-Muscle Actuator (StMA). Fundamental Muscle Extension/Contraction for StMAs is investigated as the base motion. Complex actions are realized through the Intelligent Composite Action Control (ICAC), which is a learning methodology for intelligent robots that gradually realize complex actions from the base motions. After giving the control scheme for StMA-based joints and the outline of the ICAC, they are applied to a StMA-based biped robot. It is shown that the swing-leg action for walking is realized from the base motion through the ICAC.