Development of a Powered Hip Disarticulation Prosthesis with Swing Phase Controller(Mechanical Systems)

Abstract

Our proposed powered hip disarticulation prosthesis is a capable to maneuver its hip and knee joint by two geared electric motors. To realize a semi-automatic walking controller depending on a motion of the one's own limb, a swing phase controller, which adjusts the angle of the hip joint at time of foot contact, is implemented in a walking simulation and actual walking experiments. 7th DOF walking simulation, which can move on a sagittal plane, with our proposed method shows a dynamic response that a walking model can walk on a flat floor with varying walking speed as changing the walking speed command. And by a normal subject who wears the prosthesis below his hip with his knee rising on the same side and three users of hip disarticulation prosthesis, walking experiments with varying a swing phase controller's gain for the rotation speed of hip joint of supporting leg has performed on a flat floor. Consequently, completely independent one side robotic lower limb, which has a quite simple swing phase controller, assists the walking successively in normal way.