A Pneumatic Biped with an Artificial Musculoskeletal System

Understanding the body’s musculoskeletal system is one of the ways to understand athletic ability and its development in a vertebrate animal. In this research, we propose a robot with an artificial musculoskeletal system for biomechanics research. In our work, pneumatic artificial muscle is used for the actuator of the robot. Our results show that the robot can achieve vertical jumping, soft landing from a one meter drop and postural control during standing. The robot, which is structurally similar to an animal, is found to be useful for biomechanics study. The musculoskeletal robot also help to illuminate design principles of the robot which can move quickly and skillfully in the real world.

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