A study on trunk stiffness and gait stability in quadrupedal locomotion using musculoskeletal robot

Abstract

In this study, a feasibility study on the stability of gait patterns with changeable body stiffness is reported. The periodic motions of the legs are generated as a rhyhmic motion. The stability of locomotion strongly depends on the mechanical properties of the body mechanism, especially the joint stiffness. In this report, the muscle tone of the robot motion at the trunk is changeable by using the changeable elasticity of the pneumatic actuators. The stability of quadruped locomotion in crawl, trot and pace patterns with changeable body stiffness was evaluated with hardware experiments.