Design of an agonist-antagonist active knee prosthesis

Abstract

The majority of commercial prosthetic knees are passive in nature and therefore cannot replicate the positive mechanical work exhibited by the natural human knee in early and late stance. In contrast to traditional purely dissipative prosthetic knees, we propose a biomimetic active agonist-antagonist structure designed to reproduce both positive and negative work phases of the natural joint while using series elasticity to minimize net energy consumption. We present the design and physical implementation of the active knee prosthesis prototype.