Optimization of Ankle-Foot Prosthesis with Active Alignment by Passive Elements

Authors

  • Farahnaz Rahmani Department of Mechatronic Engineering, South Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
  • Hassan Zohoor Center of Excellence in Design, Robotics and Automation, Sharif University of Technology; Academician, Academy of Sciences of IR Iran
Abstract:

Today, often ankle’s active prosthesis is used for transtibial amputated people’s walking, because these prostheses have some advantages such as increasing power and decreasing metabolism. In most of active prosthesis in order to create a movement or increase the force at the push-off, electrical actuators are used like a motor. In cases where a higher-power motor is necessary, the capacity, weight and using electricity in motor become increased, which causes problem for people with an amputation. This research is conducted to optimize ankle prosthesis with use of an active alignment which is made by experts. In this prosthesis to reduce the motor power, a passive element of spring is used in order to save energy while walking and release it in push-off. After setting spring position in the prosthesis, the dynamic and kinematic analysis are done and eventually the amount of used force in both modes of spring and non-spring would be compared. The results show that the presence of spring in the selected mechanism would cause motor to perform force increase and power reduction to mechanism at the push-off phase.

Upgrade to premium to download articles

Sign up to access the full text

Already have an account?login

similar resources

Passive Ankle-Foot Prosthesis Prototype with Extended Push-Off

Current commercially available prosthetic feet have succeeded in decreasing the metabolic cost and increasing the speed of walking compared to walking with conventional, mostly solid prosthetic feet. However, there is still a large discrepancy when compared with a non‐disabled gait, and the walking pattern remains strongly disturbed. During the stance phase of the leg, t...

full text

Active control of a powered ankle-foot prosthesis

Amputees suffer a higher metabolic demand on their bodies. Passive prostheses seek to reduce this deficit through elastic distribution of the energy inherently dissipated in walking. Yet with no capacity to generate torque they lack truly biomimetic function. The active prosthesis is a solution to this and opens up a world of active control in the timing and magnitude of energy return. Being ab...

full text

Ankle-knee prosthesis with active ankle and energy transfer: Development of the CYBERLEGs Alpha-Prosthesis

This paper presents the development of the CYBERLEGs Alpha-Prototype prosthesis, a new transfemoral prosthesis incorporating a new variable stiffness ankle actuator based on the MACCEPA architecture, a passive knee with two locking mechanisms, and an energy transfer mechanism that harvests negative work from the knee and delivers it to the ankle to assist pushoff. The CYBERLEGs Alpha-Prosthesis...

full text

A Novel Design Approach and Operational Strategy for an Active Ankle-Foot Prosthesis

1 Introduction In order to enable lower limb amputees to regain natural and versatile walking patterns, the development of active ankle-foot prostheses is required. During locomotion, above-knee amputees show a lower walking speed for keeping the energy effort in the range of non-amputee walking [2]. To avoid this, prostheses with adaptable characteristics and the possibility to store and reuse...

full text

My Resources

Save resource for easier access later

Save to my library Already added to my library

{@ msg_add @}


Journal title

volume 9  issue 2

pages  48- 55

publication date 2017-07-01

By following a journal you will be notified via email when a new issue of this journal is published.

Hosted on Doprax cloud platform doprax.com

copyright © 2015-2023