Dynamic Stabilisation of the Biped Lucy Powered by Actuators with Controllable Stiffness

This book reports on the developments of the bipedal walking robot Lucy. Specialabout it is that the biped is not actuated with the classical electrical drives butwith pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. In an antagonistic setup of such musclesboth the torque and the compliance are controllable. From human walking there isevidence that joint compliance plays an important role in energy efficient walkingand running. Moreover pneumatic artificial muscles have a high power to weightratio and can be coupled directly without complex gearing mechanism, which canbe beneficial towards legged mechanisms. Additionally, they have the capability ofabsorbing impact shocks and store and release motion energy. This book gives acomplete description of Lucy: the hardware, the electronics and the software. Ahybrid simulation program, combining the robot dynamics and muscle/valve thermodynamics,has been written to evaluate control strategies before implementingthem in the real biped.

List of contents

Part1 Introduction.- Part2 Description of Lucy.- Part3Trajectory generator.- Part4 Trajectory tracking.- Part5 Compliance.- Part6 General conclusions and future work

Summary

This book reports on the developments of the bipedal walking robot Lucy. Special
about it is that the biped is not actuated with the classical electrical drives but
with pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. In an antagonistic setup of such muscles
both the torque and the compliance are controllable. From human walking there is
evidence that joint compliance plays an important role in energy efficient walking
and running. Moreover pneumatic artificial muscles have a high power to weight
ratio and can be coupled directly without complex gearing mechanism, which can
be beneficial towards legged mechanisms. Additionally, they have the capability of
absorbing impact shocks and store and release motion energy. This book gives a
complete description of Lucy: the hardware, the electronics and the software. A
hybrid simulation program, combining the robot dynamics and muscle/valve thermodynamics,
has been written to evaluate control strategies before implementing
them in the real biped.

Product details

• Authors: Bram Vanderborght
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2016
• EAN: 9783662519646
• ISBN: 978-3-662-51964-6
• No. of pages: 284
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 16 mm x 235 mm
• Weight: 462 g
• Illustrations: XVI, 284 p.
• Series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics; Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Technology > Electronics, electrical engineering, communications engineering; B, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY, PHYSIOLOGY, engineering, Control and Systems Theory, Circuits and Systems, Systems Theory, Control, Control, Robotics, Automation, Control engineering, Robotics and Automation, Automatic control engineering, Electronic circuits, Electronic Circuits and Systems, Electronics: circuits & components, System Theory, Cybernetics & systems theory, Cybernetics and systems theory