Higher jumping of a biped musculoskeletal robot with foot windlass mechanism

Abstract

The complex of human foot plays an important role in the locomotion. Properly replicating the human foot characteristics on the humanoid robot foot design is supposed to improve the robot locomotion performance. In this research, we proposed three kinds of foot design, stiff foot, the windlass mechanism foot (with stiff plantar fascia) and the windlass mechanism foot (with elastic plantar fascia). Using a musculoskeletal biped robot and via a large set of dropping jump experiments, we confirmed that (1) the robot could achieve toe-off motion in the lifting off phase of jumping and (2) the windlass mechanism could increase the jumping height. This investigation on robot foot is expected to both improve the humanoid robot jumping performance and help us understanding how human achieve high performance locomotion.