Design of an active suspension with a controllable damper

This research concerns the design of an active suspension based on a neuromuscular-like model that can reflect the needed compliance force upon sensing displacement caused by the irregularities on the road surface. The underlying mechanism is inspired by modeling the biological muscle-reflex system that is composed of a muscle-stiffness mechanism and spindle-reflex mechanism. When a slight initial force is applied to a limb muscle, the limb motion can be reflexly enhanced through the muscle-reflex system. A neuromuscular-like model that can emulate the responses of different involuntary and voluntary movements was developed after certain salient properties of the neuromuscular system have been identified. Experiments on a six-joint PUMA 560 robot using the neuromuscular-like controller were conducted to demonstrate several potential applications of this controller. The compliance performance shown in the experiment results indicates the ability of the proposed controller in absorbing shocks. Motivated by the experiment results, the study proposed two control concepts in applying the neuromuscular-like control on an active suspension design. A physical quarter-car model was designed and fabricated to verify the performance.