Dynamic Stabilisation of the Biped Lucy Powered by Actuators with Controllable Stiffness

This book reports on the developments of the bipedal walking robot Lucy. Special
about it is that the biped is not actuated with the classical electrical drives but
with pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. In an antagonistic setup of such muscles
both the torque and the compliance are controllable. From human walking there is
evidence that joint compliance plays an important role in energy efficient walking
and running. Moreover pneumatic artificial muscles have a high power to weight
ratio and can be coupled directly without complex gearing mechanism, which can
be beneficial towards legged mechanisms. Additionally, they have the capability of
absorbing impact shocks and store and release motion energy. This book gives a
complete description of Lucy: the hardware, the electronics and the software. A
hybrid simulation program, combining the robot dynamics and muscle/valve thermodynamics,
has been written to evaluate control strategies before implementing
them in the real biped.