Design and Validation of a Powered Knee-Ankle Prosthesis with High-Torque, Low-Impedance Actuators.

ABSTRACT: We present the design of a powered knee-ankle prosthetic leg, which implements high-torque actuators with low-reduction transmissions. The transmission coupled with a high-torque and low-speed motor creates an actuator with low mechanical impedance and high backdrivability. This style of actuation presents several possible benefits over modern actuation styles in emerging robotic prosthetic legs, which include free-swinging knee motion, compliance with the ground, negligible unmodeled actuator dynamics, less acoustic noise, and power regeneration. Benchtop tests establish that both joints can be backdriven by small torques (~1-3 Nm) and confirm the small reflected inertia. Impedance control tests prove that the intrinsic impedance and unmodeled dynamics of the actuator are sufficiently sma

SUBMITTER: Elery T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7720653 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature