Bio-inspired Tensegrity Flexural Joints

Most robotics literature model the human's knee and hip as a revolute joint with limited range of rotation. Although somehow close to reality, this approach neglects a critical aspect of these joints, which is their internal flexibility. This paper presents a prototype tensegrity flexural manipulator whose kinematic behavior is inspired by human leg's gait. This prototype, which considers a hybrid (flexible-rigid) structure of the knee and hip would be able to better approximate real behavior and hopefully lead to a better design of artificial (prosthetic) knees and hips. The behavior of the proposed tensegrity manipulator was firstly predicted using OpenSim simulation environment. The paper reports the comparisons between the simulations, physical prototypes and human leg behavior for a variety of ranges of motions and tension analysis.