Design and simulation of a cable-pulley-based transmission for artificial ankle joints

Abstract

In this paper, a mechanical transmission based on cable pulley is proposed for human-like actuation in the artificial ankle joints of human-scale. The anatomy articular characteristics of the human ankle is discussed for proper biomimetic inspiration in designing an accurate, efficient, and robust motion control of artificial ankle joint devices. The design procedure is presented through the inclusion of conceptual considerations and design details for an interactive solution of the transmission system. A mechanical design is elaborated for the ankle joint angular with pitch motion. A multi-body dynamic simulation model is elaborated accordingly and evaluated numerically in the ADAMS environment. Results of the numerical simulations are discussed to evaluate the dynamic performance of the proposed design solution and to investigate the feasibility of the proposed design in future applications for humanoid robots.

Key words： biomimetic designs; ankle joints; cable-pulley transmissions; multi-body dynamic simulation; numerical characterization

Acknowledgment

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61320106012, 61375103, 61533004, 61273348, 61175077, and 61321002). Partial support was received from the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Project (Grant No. Z141100002014004), the “863” Program of China (Grant Nos. 2014AA041602, 2015AA042305, and 2015AA043202), the Key Technologies Research and Development Program (Grant Nos. 2015BAF13B01 and 2015BAK35B01), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 4154084), and the “111” Project (Grant No. B08043). The second author acknowledges Beijing Institute of Technology for supporting his visiting professorship at the Institute of Intelligent Robots in 2014‒2015.

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