Biologically Inspired Legs and Novel Flow Control Valve Toward a New Approach for Accessible Wearable Robotics

The Humanoid Walking Robot (HWR) is a research platform for the study of legged and wearable robots actuated with Hydro Muscles. The fluid operated HWR is representative of a class of biologically inspired, and in some aspects highly biomimetic robotic musculoskeletal appendages showing certain advantages in comparison to more conventional artificial limbs and braces for physical therapy/rehabilitation, assistance of daily living, and augmentation. The HWR closely mimics the human body structure and function, including the skeleton, ligaments, tendons, and muscles. The HWR can emulate close to human-like movements even when subjected to simplified control laws. One of the main drawbacks of this approach is the inaccessibility of an appropriate fluid flow management support system, in the form of affordable, lightweight, compact, and good quality valves suitable for robotics applications. To resolve this shortcoming, the Compact Robotic Flow Control Valve (CRFC Valve) is introduced and successfully proof-of-concept tested. The HWR added with the CRFC Valve has potential to be a highly energy efficient, lightweight, controllable, affordable, and customizable solution that can resolve single muscle action

Muscle‐Like Compliance in Knee Articulations Improves Biped Robot Walkings

This chapter focuses on the compliance effect of dynamic humanoid robot walking. This compliance is generated with an articular muscle emulator system, which is designed using two neural networks (NNs). One NN models a muscle and a second learns to tune the proportional integral derivative (PID) of the articulation DC motor, allowing it to behave analogously to the muscle model. Muscle emulators are implemented in the knees of a three‐dimensional (3D) simulated biped robot. The simulation results show that the muscle emulator creates compliance in articulations and that the dynamic walk, even in walk‐halt‐stop transitions, improves. If an external thrust unbalances the biped during the walk, the muscle emulator improves the control and prevents the robot from falling. The total power consumption is significantly reduced, and the articular trajectories approach human trajectories

An Overview of Legged Robots

The objective of this paper is to present the evolution and the state-of-theart in the area of legged locomotion systems. In a first phase different possibilities for mobile robots are discussed, namely the case of artificial legged locomotion systems, while emphasizing their advantages and limitations. In a second phase an historical overview of the evolution of these systems is presented, bearing in mind several particular cases often considered as milestones on the technological and scientific progress. After this historical timeline, some of the present day systems are examined and their performance is analyzed. In a third phase are pointed out the major areas for research and development that are presently being followed in the construction of legged robots. Finally, some of the problems still unsolved, that remain defying robotics research, are also addressed.N/

Compliant actuators that mimic biological muscle performance with applications in a highly biomimetic robotic arm

This paper endeavours to bridge the existing gap in muscular actuator design for ligament-skeletal-inspired robots, thereby fostering the evolution of these robotic systems. We introduce two novel compliant actuators, namely the Internal Torsion Spring Compliant Actuator (ICA) and the External Spring Compliant Actuator (ECA), and present a comparative analysis against the previously conceived Magnet Integrated Soft Actuator (MISA) through computational and experimental results. These actuators, employing a motor-tendon system, emulate biological muscle-like forms, enhancing artificial muscle technology. A robotic arm application inspired by the skeletal ligament system is presented. Experiments demonstrate satisfactory power in tasks like lifting dumbbells (peak power: 36W), playing table tennis (end-effector speed: 3.2 m/s), and door opening, without compromising biomimetic aesthetics. Compared to other linear stiffness serial elastic actuators (SEAs), ECA and ICA exhibit high power-to-volume (361 x 10^3 W/m) and power-to-mass (111.6 W/kg) ratios respectively, endorsing the biomimetic design's promise in robotic development

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field

Design and control of soft rehabilitation robots actuated by pneumatic muscles: State of the art

Robot-assisted rehabilitation has become a new mainstream trend for the treatment of stroke patients with movement disability. Pneumatic muscle (PM) is one of the most promising actuators for rehabilitation robots, due to its inherent compliance and safety features. In this paper, we conduct a systematic review on the soft rehabilitation robots driven by pneumatic muscles. This review discusses up to date mechanical structures and control strategies for PMs-actuated rehabilitation robots. A variety of state-of-the-art soft rehabilitation robots are classified and reviewed according to the actuation configurations. Special attentions are paid to control strategies under different mechanical designs, with advanced control approaches to overcome PM’s highly nonlinear and time-varying behaviors and to enhance the adaptability to different patients. Finally, we analyze and highlight the current research gaps and the future directions in this field, which is potential for providing a reliable guidance on the development of advanced soft rehabilitation robots