Walking with a Powered Cable Driven Ankle-Foot Prosthesis

Wednesday, Nov 28, 2018 7 PM
CLU Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center, 130 Overton Court, rooms 253/254 (second floor)

In the United States, there are approximately two million amputees. Among them, there are six hundred thousand people with below knee amputation who are in need of suitable ankle-foot prosthesis to regain an agile and stable gait. In this talk, we will review the design and dynamic modeling of a novel two degree of freedom ankle-foot prosthesis. The prosthesis is composed of two brushless motors connected to a carbon fiber foot using Bowden cables. The motors control both dorsi-plantarflexion and inversion-eversion degrees of freedom. This will help amputees to walk, turn or go upstairs-downstairs. Owing to the use of Bowden cables, the motors and electronics can be placed in a fanny pack and carried around the waist. This will allow amputees to walk with a light and comfortable prosthesis, keeping the actuators, electronics and batteries close to the waist. The recent work on control of the ankle-foot prosthesis inspired by human walking will be presented which is composed of several distinct kinematic events, namely the heel strike, push-off, and swing phase. The prosthesis can detect these kinematic events using the strain gauges mounted on the carbon fiber foot. Then, impedance control is used in each kinematic phase to provide a stable gait. Lastly, the ongoing and future work will be discussed to address the remaining control challenges due to variations in speed, step size, and the type of the gait.

Dr. Houman Dallali

Dr. Houman Dallali is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Mechatronics at California State University, Channel Islands California. From 2012 to 2015, he was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Department of Advanced Robotics, Italian Institute of Technology, in Genova, Italy, where he worked on modeling, simulation, and control of CoMan and WALK-MAN humanoid robots. He then joined the Human-Interactive Robotics laboratory at Michigan Technological University as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate from 2015 to 2017, where he focused on the development of walking control systems for an untethered and powered ankle-foot prosthesis.