2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Development of Artificial Leg synchronizing with A Healthy One

Research Project

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Project/Area Number	19K11326
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Section	一般
Review Section	Basic Section 59010:Rehabilitation science-related
Research Institution	Iwate Prefectural University
Principal Investigator	Murata Yoshitoshi 岩手県立大学, その他部局等, 特命教授 (80444925)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	西村行秀岩手医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (20464117)
Project Period (FY)	2019-04-01 – 2024-03-31
Keywords	義足 / 駆動義足 / 健足同期 / 歩行 / アシスト / 歩行障害 / SACH
Outline of Final Research Achievements	Several million people around the world live with limb loss. Prosthetics are useful to improve their quality of life, and some powered prosthetics enable them to walk naturally. However, most are too expensive for most amputees to afford. We develop a low-cost one that adopts the instep push/pull module to move the foot part of prosthesis and the heel raising unit (HRU) to assist raising the heel part. Experimental results of HRU demonstrate that the optimal spring stiffness of such devices linearly correlates with the body weight, and controlling release timing of the spring improves its assistance effect. However, in experimenting of the instep push/pull module, we had two problems, one was power shortage of an initial version of cylinder motor, the other was that the motor driver of higher power motor was broken because of regenerative energy. After solving such problems, we have evaluated a new module by prosthetic user to improve its control algorithms.
Free Research Field	センサー応用、医療情報
Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements	下肢切断者の平均年齢の上昇が著しく、特に疾病を原因とする下肢切断者が高齢者に増加している。高機能義足は、義足使用者のQOL向上に有効であるが、商用品は全て海外製で高価かつ保険適用外であることから、一般障がい者が購入・利用するのは難しい状況にある。本研究開発では、工業用モータによる義足・足部の上下駆動部Instep Push/Pullと踵部に装着したHeel-Raising Unit を開発し、健足側に装着したセンサのデータを基に制御することで、低コストかつスムースに歩行出来る高機能義足を実現する。それにより、筋力が低下している高齢の障がい者でも購入・利用可能とし、彼らのQOL向上に資する。