ヒラメ筋と腓腹筋のバネ腱で実現する高速ヒト様二足歩行ロボット
Gastrocnemius and Power Amplifier Soleus Spring-Tendons Achieve Fast Human-like Walking in a Bipedal Robot
ヒラメ筋と腓腹筋の腱を線形バネで模した小型二足歩行ロボットを開発し、バネ配置が足首パワー増幅や関節協調、歩行速度・効率に与える影響を実機実験で調べた。
著者: Bernadett Kiss, Emre Cemal Gonen, An Mo, Alexandra Buchmann, Daniel Renjewski, Alexander Badri-Spröwitz
分類: cs.RO
原文アブストラクト
Legged locomotion in humans is governed by natural dynamics of the human body and neural control. One mechanism that is assumed to contribute to the high efficiency of human walking is the impulsive ankle push-off, which potentially powers the swing leg catapult. However, the mechanics of the human lower leg with its complex muscle-tendon units spanning over single and multiple joints is not yet understood. Legged robots allow testing the interaction between complex leg mechanics, control, and environment in real-world walking gait. We developed a 0.49m tall, 2.2kg anthropomorphic bipedal robot with Soleus and Gastrocnemius muscle-tendon units represented by linear springs, acting as mono- and biarticular elastic structures around the robot's ankle and knee joints. We tested the influence of three Soleus and Gastrocnemius spring-tendon configurations on the ankle power curves, the coordination of the ankle and knee joint movements, the total cost of transport, and walking speed. We controlled the robot with a feed-forward central pattern generator, leading to walking speeds between 0.35m/s and 0.57m/s at 1.0Hz locomotion frequency, at 0.35m leg length. We found differences between all three configurations; the Soleus spring-tendon modulates the robot's speed and energy efficiency likely by ankle power amplification, while the Gastrocnemius spring-tendon changes the movement coordination between ankle and knee joints during push-off.
