AA Dobson
Biologically inspired design and development of a variable stiffness powered ankle-foot prosthesis
Dobson, AA; Wei, G; Ren, L
Abstract
Recent advancements in powered lower limb prostheses have appeased several difficulties faced by lower limb amputees by using a Series-Elastic Actuator (SEA) to provide powered sagittal plane flexion. Unfortunately, these devices are currently unable to provide both powered sagittal plane flexion and 2-DOF at the ankle, removing the ankle’s capacity to invert/evert, thus severely limiting terrain adaption capabilities and user comfort. The developed 2-DOF ankle system in this paper allows both powered flexion in the sagittal plane and passive rotation in the frontal plane; a SEA emulates the biomechanics of the gastrocnemius and Achilles tendon for flexion, while a novel universal-joint system provides the 2-DOF. Several studies were undertaken to thoroughly characterize the capabilities of the device. Under both level and sloped-ground conditions, ankle torque and kinematic data was obtained by using force-plates and a motion capture system. The device was found to be fully capable of providing powered sagittal plane motion and torque very close to that of a biological ankle, while simultaneously being able to adapt to sloped terrain by undergoing frontal plane motion, thus providing 2-DOF at the ankle. These findings demonstrate that the device presented in this paper poses radical improvements to powered PAFD design.
Citation
Dobson, A., Wei, G., & Ren, L. (2019). Biologically inspired design and development of a variable stiffness powered ankle-foot prosthesis. Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 11(4), https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4043603
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Apr 3, 2019 |
Online Publication Date | Apr 24, 2019 |
Publication Date | Apr 24, 2019 |
Deposit Date | Apr 4, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Apr 24, 2020 |
Journal | Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics |
Print ISSN | 1942-4302 |
Electronic ISSN | 1942-4310 |
Publisher | American Society of Mechanical Engineers |
Volume | 11 |
Issue | 4 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4043603 |
Publisher URL | https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4043603 |
Related Public URLs | http://mechanismsrobotics.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/journal.aspx |
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