Stabilizing Function of the Musculoskeletal System for Periodic Motion

Animals generate various motions by cooperatively manipulating their complicated and redundant musculoskeletal systems controlled by the nervous system. To reveal the mechanism with which a steady movement is generated, much research has been performed that shows that musculoskeletal properties themselves can stabilze motion without a sensory feedback system if the muscle architecture and the parallel elastic elements within a muscle are tuned appropriately. In this paper, we show that the condition of stability is greatly eased by limiting the targeted movement to the periodic motion. The force–velocity relationship, which is one of the most famous properties of muscle, plays a decisive role in realizing the self-stabilizing ability of the musculoskeletal system. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2009