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Development of a Pneumatic Biped Robot with

Dual Parallelogram Mechanism

Article December 2002

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 Proceedings of 2005 CACS Automatic Control Conference
Tainan, Taiwan, Nov 18-19, 2005

Development of a Pneumatic Biped Robot

with Dual Parallelogram Mechanism
Ming-Guo Her 1, Long-Jye Yeh, and Jih-Ming Chen 2
1 Tatung University, 40 ChungShan North Road, 3rd Section Taipei 104, R.O.C., mgher@tatung.com
2 Tatung University, 40 ChungShan North Road, 3rd Section Taipei 104, R.O.C., d9201001@ms2.ttu.edu.tw

Abstract pendulum on the head of the robot to measure the tilted

This research has successfully developed a pneumatic angle of the main body. Finally, the biped robot will be
biped robot TTU-P822 with dual parallelogram mechanism. showed as Fig. 1(b), and we name it TTU-P822.
The pneumatic system has lots of advantages, not only the
air can be compressed and easy to carry, per unit volume
makes more works than motor system, but also the
compressed air can be regarded as the cushion.
Furthermore, the reaction time of pneumatic system is
faster than motors and safer when system overloads. The
property of dual parallelogram mechanism is that the body (a)
link must be perpendicular to the ground, and the foot link
will be horizontal to floors. Therefore, the biped robot will
keep steady and stable posture. This thesis presents the
analysis and design of the pneumatic biped robot.
Keywords: Pneumatic Biped Robot, Dual
Parallelogram.

1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to develop a biped robot
with light structure. We use only one pneumatic power
source to control six cylinders. The action of cylinders is
an easy pneumatic circuit; there are four cylinders belong
to dual parallelogram mechanism and two for robot to tilt
and balance. At first, we design the mechanism ready and
let it can stand on the ground, due to the property of dual
parallelogram mechanism is that the body link must be
perpendicular to the ground, and the foot link will be
horizontal to floors, we add the cylinders for this walking
structure and let every steps are stable as Fig. 1(a). Then
we add tilted cylinders on the foot links to make the feet of
the robot away from the ground. Then we add a simple
(b)
Figure1. (a)Two different postures of the biped robot
with four cylinders, (b) TTU-P822 with six cylinders.
2. System Description
All of the mechanical structures are made by LEGO
bricks. The height of TTU-P822 is 430mm, the width is
185mm, and the weight is 412g. There is a RCX brick
which is a programmable single chip. The simple
pendulum will send the angle value to RCX instantly to
control a motor which takes charged of the gate of
pneumatic devices. In other words, we can adjust the
walking speed of the robot and keep TTU-P822
s balance.
 Proceedings of 2005 CACS Automatic Control Conference
Tainan, Taiwan, Nov 18-19, 2005

Therefore, when the robot walks too fast, that means the
body will topple and fall, the RCX controller will
automatically control the pneumatic gate to overcome the
inertia. Consequently, it forms a closed loop system.

Figure3. The posture of mechanism

The pneumatic system has lots of advantages, even if
we want to make robot to jump. Due to the unit pneumatic
volume can make more works, which means the cylinders
can obtain more powers in a very short time. And when the
robot lands, it is safer because the compressed air can be
regarded as the cushion. As Fig. 3, we can see the variation
of mechanism. If we want the specific hopping posture, we
can adjust the length of links and position of cylinders;
even we can add one more degree of freedom on the foot
link or body link to make jumping behavior more like
human beings.

Figure2. Dual parallelogram mechanism

The mechanism of dual parallelogram four-bar
linkage is showed as Fig. 2. We can see obviously that the
blue and red oblique lines sections are two parallelograms
which are acted by cylinders A and B. The angle sensor is
assembled on the body link, so it can measure pure angle
of the plane that is vertical to the mechanism and ground.
We assume that the other leg is controlled by cylinder C
(upper) and D, then the sequence of cylinders is ADBC. Figure4. The source of pneumatic power
The pneumatic port is fixed on the waist link and acted by As shown as Fig. 4, this device is the source of
other links when cylinders are at the limit. Therefore, pneumatic power, CO2 steel cylinder. We choose it
TTU-P8
22wi
llg
ost
rai
ghta
ndc
an
tch
ang
edi
rec
tion
s. because the price is inexpensive and easy to carry. Because
Owing to the key point of this paper is to emphasize the this mechanism is plastic and very light, the portable
pneumatic power with dual parallelogram mechanism, thus, property is considered for the metal structure. Depend on
of course it can combine motors to make its function the motor through a reduction gear, we can fine tune the
stronger. voltage regulator. The motor is controlled by RCX
controller.
 Proceedings of 2005 CACS Automatic Control Conference
Tainan, Taiwan, Nov 18-19, 2005

3. Control Analysis the cylinder:

We set the stoke of walking step, so if there is no air D 2
V 2S / (3.1)
power source, TTU-P822 will still not topple and fall. But 4
i
fweg
iveas
pee
dtot
her
obo
t,i
t
snecessary to overcome Where S is the cross-section area of pipes, and D is
the inertia that will make TTU-P822 lose balance. Thus, the internal diameter of the cylinder. But all cylinders
we can see Fig. 5, we use RCX controller to adjust the should load and bear the weight of the robot, there is a
motor to control the pressure regulator. time delay as the cylinders overcome the load. Assume that
F is the load, P is the pressure that we can control by
the RCX, and L is the stroke of the cylinder, then we can
obtain the equation as follow:

2
D L
F D 2
T 4 1
(3.2)
2S 2P

As the load increases, delay time T will raise up

Figure5. The control procedure
The robot part contains cylinders and a pendulum,
one is detective device and the other is active device. So
the whole system forms a close loop situation, and the
calculating core depends on the RCX.
In Fig. 6, we can see the one step of the robot with
dual parallelogram mechanism. When one foot is away
from the ground, the robot will tilt forward, then it finishes
half step. After that, the other foot retracts and stretches
out. At the same time, the cylinders E and F (under the foot
links) will keep the corresponding angle automatically as
you design its structure at first.
and the speed of TTU-P822 will slow down. So we set the
P can be tunable automatically to avoid too much delay
time. We can see Fig. 8 that the robot is smooth and stable
at 0 sec ~ 1 sec and 3 sec ~ 4 sec.
4. Experiments
As shown as Fig. 7, TTU-P822 walks 8 steps and
spends about half a minute. And the walking distance is
about 750mm. The lines in pictures are pneumatic pipes
and a RCX control wire.

Figure6. One step

If there is no load, we can calculate the velocity of Figure7. TTU-P822 walks 8 steps
 Proceedings of 2005 CACS Automatic Control Conference
Tainan, Taiwan, Nov 18-19, 2005

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[6] S.Ka
jit
aan
dK.Ta
ni,
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rime
nta
lst
udyofbi
ped
Figure8. The variation of angle sensor dynamic walking in the linear inverted pendulum
The pressure of pneumatic source is controlled by mode
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5. Concluding Remarks
[8] A. De Luca and G. Oriolo, "Stabilization of the Acrobot
This thesis presents a light pneumatic biped robot
via Iterative State Steering", IEEE Conference on
TTU-P822 with dual parallelogram mechanism. We
Robotics and Automation, pp. 3581-3587, May 1998,
successfully design and provide a new structure of biped
Leuven, Belgium.
robot and contribute the experience of the control law of
pneumatic robotic system. The experiment result shows the [9] Sung-Hoon Kim, Jun-Ho Oh, and Ki-Hoon Lee,
system works excellently and the performance is
Des
ignof4J
oin
ts3Li
nksBi
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tsGa
its
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