Muscular viscoelasticity design and evaluation in feed-forward position control of robot arm based on animal musculoskeletal model

This paper describes important role of muscular viscoelasticity at Feed-forward position control of robot arm based on animal musculoskeletal model. Feed-back controller of animals has big delay. Therefore, feed-forward (FF) controller contributes mainly in local motor control of animals. We focus control ability of animal muscle. Muscle has variable viscoelasticity according to muscular activation level. Proposed controller utilize this characteristic. The controller based on antagonistic muscular pair can be represented by equivalent block diagram containing PD controller. This representation enables its design and evaluation easily. Proposed controller is evaluated by our experimental robot arm which has a mechanism based on bi-articular muscle.