A feedforward compensation approach for cable-driven musculoskeletal systems


 This paper presents a feedforward compensation approach for musculoskeletal systems (MSs). Compared with traditional rigid robots, human arms have the advantages of flexibility and safety in operation in unstructured environments. However, the influence of external unknown disturbances, inner friction effects, and dynamic uncertainties of the MS makes it difficult to model and practically apply. In order to reduce the inner friction effects of the hardware platform and the over-relaxation/tension of the cable-pull drive, a feedforward friction compensation method for the cable-pulled artificial muscle unit is proposed. The method analyzes the friction causes of the hardware structure and establishes a mapping network relationship between the joint variables and the muscle force error in the muscle space. The experimental results show that the method can effectively improve the control accuracy and reduce the artificial muscle over-relaxation/tension instability.