CYBERLEGs: A User-Oriented Robotic Transfemoral Prosthesis with Whole-Body Awareness Control

Abstract

Restoring the mobility of transfemoral dysvascular amputees is essential to their rehabilitation process. Impeding the restoration of mobility, exhaustion is often the cause of noneffective deambulation of elderly lowerlimb amputees using a prosthesis as they use more energy for locomotion than younger amputees do. This article presents finite-state control of a novel powered prosthesis prototype for transfemoral amputees based on whole-body awareness. Intention detection was implemented through a noninvasive, distributed wireless wearable sensory system. The cybernetic lower-limb cognitive orthoprosthesis (CYBERLEGs) system was evaluated in a study involving three amputees. The subjects were able to walk with the prosthesis without training, showing accurate performance of the intention detection. The functionality of the CYBERLEGs approach was confirmed by gait pattern analysis and intention detection statistics.