A Low-Inertia and High-Stiffness Cable-Driven Biped Robot: Design, Modeling, and Control

Jun Tang, Haiming Mou, Yunfeng Hou (), Yudi Zhu, Jian Liu and Jianwei Zhang
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Jun Tang: School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Haiming Mou: School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Yunfeng Hou: Institute of Machine Intelligence, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Yudi Zhu: Institute of Machine Intelligence, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Jian Liu: Institute of Machine Intelligence, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
Jianwei Zhang: Department of Informatics, University of Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany

Mathematics, 2024, vol. 12, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: In this paper, a biped robot system for dynamic walking is presented. It has two 2-degree-of-freedom (DOF) lightweight legs and a 6-DOF hip. All the joint pulleys of the legs are driven by motors that are placed at the hip using steel cables. Since all the heavy motors are mounted at the hip, the biped robot has remarkably low-mass legs beyond the hip, which guarantees low inertia during walking at high speeds. Utilizing cable-amplification mechanisms, high stiffness and strength are achieved, resulting in better control performance compared to conventional direct-driven methods. Techniques are developed to estimate joint-angle errors caused by the elastic deformation of the cables. To achieve smooth control, we introduce the concept of a virtual leg, which is an imaginary leg connecting the hip joint and the ankle joint. A robust control approach based on the “virtual leg” is presented, which considers the variances of the virtual leg length during walking. Experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the mechanical design and the proposed control approach.

Keywords: biped robot; cable driven; low inertia; high stiffness; joint-angle error; virtual leg (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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