Novel FF Control Algorithm of Robot Arm Based on Bi-articular Muscle Principle - Emulation of Muscular Viscoelasticity for Disturbance Suppression and Path Tracking

Recently there are many trials to introduce animal characteristics into robots. Animals have amazing control ability. We consider that muscular viscoelasticity and muscular arrangements have important roles in such ability. In this paper muscular arrangements of upper arm are simplified to a model consist of four mono-articular muscles and two bi-articular muscles. We suggest novel control method to drive this simple arm model with feedforward control. This method obtain robustness like feedback control to use muscular viscoelasticity. Furthermore we made an robotarm based on the principle of bi-articular muscles to verify proposed method. Its mechanism and control method is described.