UC Santa Cruz

This thesis presents a preliminary investigation of using the principles of tenseg

rity to model the interactions that make up the human knee. The main theory behind

tensegrity is to suspend compressionable members in a network for tensile members.

Current robotics literature views the human knee as a revolute joint or as a ball and

socket joint. Although the simplicity of this approach has significant advantages for

robotic systems, this approach has significant disadvantages for biologically inspired

systems (e.g., prosthetics). The current research will investigate if tensegrity based

robotic design could be used for the next generation robotics and prosthetic devices.