FPGA-Based Emulation of a Muscle Stretch Reflex on an Electric Series Elastic Actuator

Spinal reflexes play an important role in maintaining balance during human dynamic locomotion because they provide the fastest reaction to unexpected external mechanical impact [6]. Implementation of spinal reflexes behavior in bipedal robotic systems can increase their stability and movement speed which is an essential problem for this type of robot. Latency of the reflex response is one of the important factors that define the delay of mechanical stabilization which influences the final system stabilization during movement. This article shows one of the possible implementations of emulation of low-latency natural muscle behavior using the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware platform.