FLEGX: Multibody Approach in Flexible Structure Design and Control

Nowadays the robotic challenges are various and many of these are oriented towards bioinspired, safe and energy efficient solutions. The analysis of these systems traditionally is performed by considering rigid bodies and ideal connections thanks to the easier approach in studying their motion and performances. However, in all the cases when the structural deformations determine the magnitude of the external forces acting on the mechanism, the structural flexibility cannot be neglected. Considering these needs, the authors propose the development of a flexible robotic leg as a first step in the design of a jumping humanoid robot. It is called FLEGX (FLEXible Leg) and it has a double layer control system: low and high level respectively. The first one aims at obtaining an order reduction model, while the latter tends to produce a stable orbit in the state space variable to perform a controlled sequence of jumps. FLEGX design validation was performed using the software MSC.Nastran R and MSC.Adams R -Matlab/Simulink R integrated environment. Future works concern an extended campaign of experimental tests on the physical to collect data useful for validate the numerical models.