Compliance control and Feldman~s muscle model

This paper deals with the design and realization of bioinspired kinematic chains controllable both in position and compliance (or stiffness) from a static and a dynamic point of view. While position control is clearly referred to common geometrical lagrangian coordinates for the considered system, in order to deal with the compliance of the chain, especially in dynamic cases, global and less intuitive variables have to be defined and described. In this work, the compliance explained in the Feldman's equilibrium point theory is attributed with a mathematical architecture. Electroactive polymer fiber bundles are designed ad-hoc and driven by bioinspired control variables to implement pseudomuscular actuators devoted to the realization of biomimetic movements. Finally, the idea of dynamical stiffness is introduced and active kinematic chains are studied under this point of view