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Bionic Muscle Control with Adaptive Stiffness for Bionic Parallel Mechanism

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Abstract

As the torso is critical to the coordinated movement and flexibility of vertebrates, a 6-(Degree of Freedom) DOF bionic parallel torso with noteworthy motion space was designed in our previous work. To improve the compliance of the parallel mechanism, a pair of virtual muscle models is constructed on both sides of the rotating joints of each link of the mechanism, and a bionic muscle control algorithm is introduced. By analyzing the control parameters of the muscle model, dynamic characteristics similar to those of biological muscle are obtained. An adaptive stiffness control is proposed to adaptively adjust the stiffness coefficient with the change in the external load of the parallel mechanism. The attitude closed-loop control can effectively keep the attitude angle unchanged when the position of the moving platform changes. The simulations and experiments are undertaken to validate compliant movements and the flexibility and adaptability of the parallel mechanism.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51605039), in part by the Open Foundation of Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Center of Intelligent Manufacturing Robot Technology for Large Components, in part by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018T111005), in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Nos. 300102259308, 300102259401, and 300102252503).

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Correspondence to Yaguang Zhu.

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Zhu, Y., Li, R. & Song, Z. Bionic Muscle Control with Adaptive Stiffness for Bionic Parallel Mechanism. J Bionic Eng 20, 598–611 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42235-022-00279-w

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