Detailed dynamics modeling of BioBiped's monoarticular and biarticular tendon-driven actuation system

Bio-inspired, musculoskeletal design of bipedal robots offers great potential towards more human-like robot performance but imposes major challenges on their design and control, as it is challenging to analyze the contribution of each active and passive series elastic tendon to the overall joint, leg and robot dynamics. In this paper, detailed mathematical models of the tendon-driven, series elastically actuated mono- and biarticular structures of the BioBiped1 robot are presented. These enable a systematic analysis of the design space and characteristic curves as well as to derive guidelines for the design of improved prototypes. The derived models are applied to investigate the effects of the active and passive, mono- and biarticular structures on different performance criteria of 1D hopping motions by means of a detailed multi-body system dynamics simulation.