Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Self-Balancing Robot Leg, Ben Bolen

Student Research Symposium

Research in the Agile and Adaptive Robotics Lab involves the creation of biomimetic robots. To this end, we developed a self-balancing robot leg actuated with braided pneumatic actuators (BPAs)—a type of pneumatic artificial muscle. These BPAs, akin to human muscles, exhibit properties such as high strength-to-weight ratio and tunable passive stiffness. An Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) was placed on top of the tibia for feedback and the tibia and foot were connected with a hinge joint. The orientation of the ankle joint was controlled with an Arduino microcontroller sending commands to the proportional pressure valves supplying the BPAs. Leg balance …