Hello, I found the site and this forum while surfing for inspiration on my pet idea, a biomimetic tendon controlled robot I'm so excited to see the idea is actually feasible and being worked on. I already like how the Android 10 looks, can't wait until the work continues.

I toyed with idea of having elastic section on the tendon to store energy for eg. a kicking motion, and to have the engines run only one way; tendon would unspool by a magnetic clutch disengaging the gear. It could work for semi-passive dynamics, passive dynamic walkers have been much more impressive with their walking demos than active (considering the difference in complexity at least!)

 

Hi, and thanks!.

Yes, I've thought through similar ideas for using passive dynamics, the closest I got was in Android 7, which used motors pulling strings and bungee cords pulling back the other way all over the legs:

YouTube - Android 7 first steps

The whole thing used only three motors to walk, but it was very hit and miss to get it going. That's why this time I decided to have motors pulling in both directions helped by bungee cord. However, it's still possible to slacken the motor driven cords and rely on the bungee only for travel in one (reverse) direction which gives some interesting possibilities.

We'll see how it goes when I pick the project back up again...

__________________
James - XRobots.co.uk

 

oh yes, that looks lovely! A bit terminatorish too