Spring Loaded Inverted Pendulum Model Based Musculoskeletal Biped Robot Design and Sequential Jumping Experiment

Abstract

In order to control the motion of a robot, a successful approach is to approximate the robot dynamics as a simplified model. However, the discrepancies between the actual mechanical properties of the robot and the simplified model will result in motion failure for the robot. To address this issue, this paper proposes a pneumatic-driven bipedal musculoskeletal robot that match the mechanistic properties of a simplified spring-loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model. The SLIP model is widely applied to robots because it exhibits passive stability and dynamic properties that are similar to human gaits. We designed a musculoskeletal biped robot with its center of mass concentrated in the small body near the hip joint, with low leg inertia based on the properties of the SLIP model. In addition, it it has been verified that the robot exhibits similar characteristics to the SLIP model through a sequential jumping experiment.