Development and Evaluation of a Powered Artificial Gastrocnemius for Transtibial Amputee Gait
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Author(s)
Eilenberg, Michael Frederick
Kuan, Jiun-Yih
Herr, Hugh M
Date Issued
January 2018
Journal
Journal of Robotics
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Citation
Eilenberg, Michael F. et al. "Development and Evaluation of a Powered Artificial Gastrocnemius for Transtibial Amputee Gait." Journal of Robotics 2018 (January 2018): 5951965 © 2018 Michael F. Eilenberg et al
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Existing robotic transtibial prostheses provide only ankle joint actuation and do not restore biarticular function of the gastrocnemius muscle. This paper presents the first powered biarticular transtibial prosthesis, which is a combination of a commercial powered ankle-foot prosthesis and a motorized robotic knee orthosis. The orthosis is controlled to emulate the human gastrocnemius based on neuromuscular models of matched nonamputees. Together with the ankle-foot prosthesis, the devices provide biarticular actuation. We evaluate differences between this biarticular condition and a monoarticular condition with the orthosis behaving as a free-joint. Six participants with transtibial amputation walk with the prosthesis on a treadmill while motion, force, and metabolic data are collected and analyzed for differences between conditions. The biarticular prosthesis reduces affected-side biological knee flexion moment impulse and hip positive work during late-stance knee flexion, compared to the monoarticular condition. The data do not support our hypothesis that metabolism decreases for all participants, but some participants demonstrate large metabolic reductions with the biarticular condition. These preliminary results suggest that a powered artificial gastrocnemius may be capable of providing large metabolic reductions compared to a monoarticular prosthesis, but further study is warranted to determine an appropriate controller for achieving more consistent metabolic benefits.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5951965
