Optimal attachment of bi-articular muscles for improved stiffness generation

For an anthropomorphic robot, this paper presents the optimal attachment of bi-articular muscles for improved stiffness generation As the optimal criteria, the maximal dynamic range of the coupling joint stiffness and the reduced semi-degeneracy in stiffness generation are considered The attachment of bi-articular muscles is optimized to determine the muscle spacing, the muscle count, the muscle combination, and the muscle size. Efforts are expended to make the optimization to be simple and effective resorting to geometrical reasoning.