Improvement of Performance for Musculoskeletal Robots by Mountable Actuator Units

Abstract

It is very difficult to decide and to optimize the layouts of muscle which may completely fulfill the demands for muscle tension and joint stiffness of tendon driven systems at the design stage. However, muscle that can be easily added to the system depending on the situation makes it possible to seek optimal layouts of muscle through experimentation. This paper describes the development of two types of actuator units which can be easily added to the tendon-driven system. One is the regulable stiffness actuator unit which a nonlinear spring element is built into, and the other is an actuator unit which is smaller than actuator unit with regulable stiffness. To verify the effects of the actuator units on performance, we experiment with a musculoskeletal humanoid, Kojiro, to which the two types of actuator units developed are added.