Personalized design of ankle-foot prosthesis based on computer modeling of amputee locomotion

ABSTRACT

This study proposes a computer modeling approach to find the optimal damping coefficients of the viscoelastic ankle-foot prostheses for each specific amputee. A two-dimensional locomotion model was developed for a transtibial amputee and personalized using his body measures and the reference gait pattern of an equivalent able-bodied subject. By employing the forward dynamic simulation, the amputee’s locomotion was synthesized for different prosthetic settings to find the optimal damping coefficients, based on a kinematics and a total work cost function. Results indicated a good agreement between the model predictions and the experimental observations.

KEYWORDS:

• below-knee amputee
• locomotion model
• optimal damping coefficients

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank participants for their attendance as well as Vahideh Moradi for her assistance in recruiting the participants and performing the experiments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.