Equilibrium point control of artificial muscles using recruitment of many motor units

This paper presents the design and implementation of antagonistic artificial muscle actuators which combine equilibrium point control with a segmented muscle architecture similar to the motor units within mammalian skeletal muscle. By varying the number of recruited motor units in a pair of antagonistic actuators, the stiffness and angle of a joint are controlled. An antagonistic actuator system is presented that can independently control the equilibrium position and stiffness of a single degree of freedom joint using co-contraction.