title: Antagonistic active knee prosthesis. A metabolic cost of walking comparison with a variable-damping prosthetic knee.
abstract: This paper examines the impact of a biomimetic active knee prosthesis on the metabolic costs associated with a unilateral transfemoral amputee walking at self selected speed. In this study we compare the antagonistic active knee prosthesis developed at MIT to an electronically controlled, variable-damping commercial knee prosthesis, the Otto Bock C-leg. Use of the active knee prosthesis resulted in both, a 17% increase in an amputee's average self selected walking speed from 1.12 m/s to 1.31 m/s, and a 6.8% reduction in metabolic cost. The results of this study suggest that an agonist-antagonist active knee prosthesis design with variable impedance control can offer walking energetic advantages over commercially available systems.
authors.affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Media Laboratory, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. ernesto@media.mit.edu
authors.forename: Ernesto C
authors.initials: EC
authors.lastname: Martinez-Villalpando
authors.forename: Luke
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mooney
authors.forename: Grant
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Elliott
authors.forename: Hugh
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Herr
mesh_terms: D000674:Amputees; D004734:Energy Metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007720:Knee Prosthesis; D008297:Male; D011474:Prosthesis Design; D013686:Telemetry; D019415:Torque; D016138:Walking / Q000502:physiology*