Design of self-contained biped walker with pneumatic actuators

Abstract

A McKibben artificial muscle has suitable properties for realizing walking and running biped robots such as light weight, springy nature, and efficiency. Since controlling McKibben muscles is difficult because of their nonlinearity, we have to design robot dynamic parameters carefully. If the parameters are designed properly, the walking controller can be simple. In this paper, we describe a developed walking biped robot utilizing McKibben muscles and study on the influence of dynamic parameters on walking behaviors.