Active motion generation using musculo-skeletal models

Biological motion is fascinating in almost every aspect you look upon it. Especially locomotion plays a crucial part in the evolution of life. Structures, like the bones connected by joints, soft and connective tissues and contracting proteins in a muscle-tendon unit enable and prescribe the respective species' specific locomotion pattern. Most importantly, biological motion is autonomously learned, it is untethered as there is no external energy supply and typical for vertebrates, it's muscle-driven. This talk is focused on human motion. Digital models and biologically inspired robots are presented, built for a better understanding of biology’s complexity. Modeling musculoskeletal systems reveals that the mapping from muscle stimulations to movement dynamics is highly nonlinear and complex, which makes it difficult to control those systems with classical techniques. However, experiments on a simulated musculoskeletal model of a human arm and leg and real biomimetic muscle-driven robots show that it is possible to learn an accurate controller despite high redundancy and nonlinearity, while retaining sample efficiency. More examples on active muscle-driven motion will be given.