'Kenken'. A Biologically Inspired One-Legged Running Robot.

Abstract

As many biomechanists indicate, tendon plays important role for running or jumping motion. It stores the kinetic energy as a potential energy during stance and also absorbs the impulse at touch down. Inspired by such biomechanical studies, we propose a new simple mechanical model for hindlimb of a dog to realize a robot which imitates dog running, and the hardware design of one-legged running robot, “Kenken” The robot has an articulated leg and uses two hydraulic actuators as muscles and a tensile spring as a tendon. Using an empirical controller based on the characteristic dynamics of the model, the robot has succeeded in planar one-legged running. Although the problem related to the stability at the higher running speed remains, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed leg mechanism is effective for robotic running.