FLEGX: A bioinspired design for a jumping humanoid leg

Abstract

Robotics in the last decades is moving towards bioinspired solutions in order to develop systems increasingly integrated with the human environment. Among them, legged robots fascinates more and more researchers thanks to their ability of moving in unstructured environment such as the ones typical of earthquakes, where in the near future robots are planned to be send to help humans while performing dangerous tasks. On the base of this findings, the authors propose a novel concept for a jumping humanoid leg, based on the key role played from the structural flexibility. The geometric and dynamic features of this leg have been selected thanks to a targeted set of numerical simulations. An extensive campaign of experimental tests useful for the validation of the numerical model here presented will be a matter of future works.