Bouncing monopod with bio-mimetic muscular-skeleton system

Structure of a human’s muscular-skeleton system is supposed to play an essential role for realizing dynamic locomotion such as jumping and running. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the human-like morphology for dynamic bouncing. We designed a monopod that had a bio-mimetic muscular-skeleton system utilizing pneumatic artificial muscles. Through the experiments, we confirmed that the biarticular muscles strongly governed the coordinated movement of its body. Utilizing such synergy brought by the muscles, a simple controller could realize stable bouncing even though the pneumatic artificial muscles have complicated characteristics.