We present a novel pneumatic augmentation to traditional electric motor-actuated legged robot to increase intermittent power density to perform infrequent explosive hopping behaviors. The pneumatic system is composed of a pneumatic pump, a tank, and a pneumatic actuator. The tank is charged up by the pump during regular hopping motion that is created by the electric motors. At any time after reaching a desired air pressure in the tank, a solenoid valve is utilized to rapidly release the air pressure to the pneumatic actuator (piston) which is used in conjunction with the electric motors to perform explosive hopping, increasing maximum hopping height for one or subsequent cycles. We show that, on a custom-designed one-legged hopping robot, without any additional power source and with this novel pneumatic augmentation system, their associated system identification and optimal control, the robot is able to realize highly explosive hopping with power amplification per cycle by a factor of approximately 5.4 times the power of electric motor actuation alone.

翻译：我们提出了一种新颖的气动增强方案，用于传统电机驱动的腿部机器人，以提升间歇性功率密度，使其能够执行爆发式跳跃行为。该气动系统由气泵、储气罐和气动执行器组成。在电机驱动的常规跳跃运动中，气泵对储气罐进行充气。当储气罐内气压达到预设值后，通过电磁阀快速释放压缩空气至气动执行器（活塞），该执行器与电机协同完成爆发式跳跃，从而提升单次或后续循环的最大跳跃高度。实验结果表明，在定制设计的单腿跳跃机器人上，无需额外电源，仅通过该新型气动增强系统及其对应的系统辨识与最优控制，即可实现高度爆发式跳跃，单循环功率放大倍数约为纯电机驱动的5.4倍。