Model-Based Nonlinear Control of a Class of Musculoskeletal Systems

The presented work addresses the motion control problem for a class of musculoskeletal systems, composed of the combination of a rigid multibody system (i.e. the skeletal part) subjected to efforts produced by a set of muscle-tendon complexes. A control law, prescribing the rate of change of muscle fiber activation, is proposed and shown to guarantee exponential convergence of skeletal joint angles to user-defined desired trajectories. Results of numerical simulations, for a simple two degree of freedom skeletal system actuated by five muscle-tendon complexes, illustrate efficacy of the approach.