Theoretical Hill-Type Muscle and Stability: Numerical Model and Application

Abstract

The construction of artificial muscles is one of the most challenging developments in today's biomedical science. The application of artificial muscles is focused both on the construction of orthotics and prosthetics for rehabilitation and prevention purposes and on building humanoid walking machines for robotics research. Research in biomechanics tries to explain the functioning and design of real biological muscles and therefore lays the fundament for the development of functional artificial muscles. Recently, the hyperbolic Hill-type force-velocity relation was derived from simple mechanical components. In this contribution, this theoretical yet biomechanical model is transferred to a numerical model and applied for presenting a proof-of-concept of a functional artificial muscle. Additionally, this validated theoretical model is used to determine force-velocity relations of different animal species that are based on the literature data from biological experiments. Moreover, it is shown that an antagonistic muscle actuator can help in stabilising a single inverted pendulum model in favour of a control approach using a linear torque generator.

Quantifying control effort of biological and technical movements: An information-entropy-based approach

“…the well-known muscle force-length-velocity dependency. These reduced models were specifically introduced to reveal the relevance of muscle properties in periodic movements, such as hopping [18,19] and confirmed previous findings that the force-length-velocity relation of muscles is significant with respect to the control of biological movements [11,13,18,49,59,60]. More precisely, neglecting the force-velocity relation results in unstable hopping with the proposed simple bio-inspired controllers in the reduced [18,19] and in more complex models [13,59].…”

Evaluating Morphological Computation in Muscle and DC-Motor Driven Models of Hopping Movements

“…Similar effects have been demonstrated for jumping (van Soest and Bobbert, 1993) and walking (Gerritsen et al, 1998;John et al, 2013). In conclusion, this implied that studies on neural control of biological movement should consider the biomechanical characteristics of muscle contraction (Pinter et al, 2012;Schmitt et al, 2013;Dura-Bernal et al, 2016). We also showed that a state-dependent analysis of MC leads to additional insights.…”