Hopping planning of the bionic leg mechanism driven by PAMs with biarticular muscle

Bionic robots are generally driven by motors. As robots driven by pneumatic artificial muscles(PAMs) have the advantages of light weight, good bionics and flexibility, more and more researchers have adopted PAMs to drive bionic robots. A kind of bionic leg driven by PAMs for hopping is proposed in this work. A 3-DOF bionic leg driven by 4 PAMs is designed by analyzing the biological structure and movement principles of frog legs, and 3 kinds of leg configuration with different PAMs arrangement is proposed. One biarticular muscle is used to increase the joint rotating range. The bracket pulley and PAMs for driving joint can effectively increase its rotating range. The rotating range of hip and knee joint driven by a biarticular muscle is simulated. The simulation results show that the biarticular muscle can transfer the movement of the hip joint to the knee joint and increase the rotating range of the knee joint. The greater the contraction of PAM, the greater the rotating range of joint. The bionic leg can perform planned step distance and step height of hopping.