Through the development of a biomechatronic knee prosthesis for transfemoral amputees: Mechanical design and manufacture, human

— This paper presents the development of a biomechatronic knee prosthesis for transfemoral amputees. This kind of prostheses are considered ‘intelligent’ because they are able to automatically adapt their response at the knee axis, as a natural knee does. This behavior is achieved by characterizing the amputee’s gait through the signals captured with instrumentation of a prosthesis, which provides feedback about its current state along the gait cycle and therefore responds with the corresponding control action. In this case, unlike other commercially available intelligent knee prostheses, gait cycle characterization is based on accelerometers signals processed by an events detection algorithm. Two intelligent control strategies are presented: a bio-inspired approach, that consists of using a central pattern generator to generate a knee angle reference to be followed by the prosthesis during walking, and an adaptive scheme, that applies a control action proportional to the knee ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Rafael R. Torrealba, Claudia Pérez-D'Arpino, José Cappelletto, Leonardo Fermin-Leon, Gerardo Fernández-López, Juan C. Grieco
• Keywords: Biomechatronic Knee Prosthesis, ICRA 2010, Knee, Prosthesis, Robotics