Bipedal robots have been developed that are capable of various motions such as walking, running and jumping. In particular, dynamic motion including running and jumping requires high power in a short time. Humans generate the instantaneous force by the elastic element and control it by the viscous element in the muscles. Therefore we develop a leg robot for jumping that relies on these elements. This robot uses a straight-fiber-type artificial muscle and a magnetorheological (MR) brake. In this study, we produced one-leg robot, calculated the jumping height and conducted the jumping experiment to evaluate the simulation. As a result the robot jumped when the mass of the robot was 1.5 kg, 1.0 kg and 0.5 kg. The jumping height was 33.9 mm, 54.2 mm and 82.5 mm. The simulation result was 36.9 mm, 59.0 mm and 94.6 mm.
Highly rigid actuators such as a geared motor or hydraulic actuator are widely used in industrial robots. To obtain high-speed motion, it is necessary to increase the actuator output as the robot weight increases. In contrast, humans perform motions with instantaneous force-as in a jump or throw-via variable viscoelastic characteristics. Therefore, we developed a manipulator with variable viscoelastic joint using an artificial muscle and a magnetorheological(MR) brake. Furthermore, we generated instantaneous force, and the dead and rise times decreased compared to the conventional method. In this paper, we controlled the arm position after arbitrary instantaneous force by applying equilibrium of force to the joint. Furthermore, we controlled the arm vibrations by controlling the MR brake using an evaluation function. The results obtained were quite satisfactory.
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