Biarticular Muscle-Tendon Structure in Hopping Robotic Leg

8 August 2019

00:44

We investigate the role of lower leg muscle-tendon structures in providing serial elastic behavior to the hip actuator. We present a leg design with physical elastic elements in leg angle and virtual leg axis direction, and its impact onto energy efficient legged locomotion. The biarticular leg shows, to the best of our knowledge, the lowest achieved relative cost of transport documented for all dynamically hopping and running robots: 64% lower than a comparable-sized, running animal (tCOT=1.2). Accepted for publication in Frontiers in Neurorobotics (07/2019) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbot.2019.00064/abstract