Musculoskeletal Robot with Motor Driven Artificial Muscle

Compared with the conventional articulated robotic arm, human arm has an irreplaceable advantage in manipulation due to its better robustness and flexibility. However, many mechanisms of the musculoskeletal system have not been fully verified, such as robustness, compliance, dexterity, and so on. In this work, we build a musculoskeletal robot of two muscles and a single joint based on the new artificial muscle module of motor drive and cord traction. Subsequently, a muscle control method is proposed with feedforward friction compensation for model errors. Various experiments are carried out to evaluate the basic performance of the proposed musculoskeletal robot and the controller. The friction experiments show that the average error of actual muscle force be of 5% after friction compensation. The trajectory tracking experiment is carried out, proving that the average error of muscle force and joint angle are less than 3N and 3 degrees, respectively. This work provides a hardware basis for future verification of the advantages of the musculoskeletal system. It will promote the development of manufacturing and daily service of anthropomimetic robotics in the near future.