Self Support Study of Prosthetic Leg with Variable Elastic System and Mechatronic Integration

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K12500
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Intelligent robotics
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: Inaba Masayuki 東京大学, 大学院情報理工学系研究科, 教授 (50184726)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): SUGAI Fumihito 東京大学, 大学院情報理工学系研究科, 特任助教 (30739256)
• Research Collaborator: Sun Xiaojun
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 能動義足 / バイオメカニクス / 直列弾性アクチュエータ / 当事者研究

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this work, a novel mechanism to build lightweight and compact powered prosthetic knee are presented. Series elastic actuator is applied in building robotic prosthesis in our research in order to absorb shock during heel strike and store and release energy to improve energy efficiency with spring. Compact motor drive and control system have been embedded in the prototype and trajectory tracking approach based on human gait data is proposed to control the knee on level ground walking. The knee has been evaluated to assist standing up from chair and walking on the flat ground and results shows that it could help subject stand up without inclination and walk naturally. This prosthetic knee could bring user benefit such as more safety, less fatigue and less load on hip and sound leg and also increase battery's duration time, which make it feasible to commercialization.

Free Research Field

Robotics