Sliding Muscle Surface Control of the Muscle-Driven Musculoskeletal System

In this study, a sliding muscle surface controller (SMSC) is designed to suppress disturbances and to reduce uncertainty in the muscle-driven musculoskeletal system (MDMS). When performing manipulation tasks in unstructured environments, bio-inspired robots are able to exhibit more flexibility and safety. Although the model of MDMS can be solved by combining the muscle model and the joint-link dynamics, the influence of unknown external disturbances and dynamic uncertainties makes it difficult to describe the system perfectly in practice. In order to solve the problems, a sliding muscle surface controller with an integral power reaching law is designed to suppress the chattering problem in the control and improve the anti-interference ability of the system and reduce the integrates error between expected and simulation. Subsequently, the stability of musculoskeletal system was ensured using the principle of Lyapunov synthesis. Finally, the simulation results showed that the proposed design techniques could effectively improve the robustness of muscle model.