Powered artificial knee with agonist-antagonist actuation

Abstract

A knee prosthesis comprises an agonist-antagonist arrangement of two series- elastic actuators in parallel, including a knee joint, flexion and extension actuators connected to the joint in parallel with a leg member, and a controller for independently energizing the actuators to control the movement of the knee joint and leg. The flexion actuator comprises the series combination of a flexion motor and a flexion elastic element and the extension actuator comprises the series combination of an extension motor and an extension elastic element. Sensors provide feedback to the controller. The flexion actuator and the extension actuator may be unidirectional, with the flexion and extension elastic elements being series springs. The extension actuator may alternatively be bidirectional, with the extension elastic element being a set of pre-compressed series springs. Alternatively, the flexion elastic element may be a non-linear softening spring and the extension elastic element may be a non-linear hardening spring.

Description

[0001] related application [0002] This application claims priority to US Provisional Application No. 61 / 148,545, filed January 30, 2010, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. [0003] This application is a continuation-in-part of co-pending U.S. Patent Application No. 12 / 608,627, filed October 29, 2009, which is U.S. Patent No. 11 / 642,993, filed December 19, 2006 Continuation of Application, Application No. 11 / 642,993, which is now abandoned, claims priority to now expired U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 751,680, filed December 19, 2005, and which is listed below Continuation-in-Part of U.S. Patent Application Nos. 11 / 395,448, 11 / 495,140, ​​and 11 / 600,291 and 11 / 499,853 (now U.S. Patent No. 7,313,463), filed August 4, 2005 U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 705,651, filed on May 1, 2009, is a continuation-in-part of U.S. Patent Application No. 11 / 395,448 listed below, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by refer...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

While variable damping knees offer some advantages over purely passive knee structures, they cannot generate active mechanical energy and thus cannot replicate the active working phases of the human knee, such as standing-sitting, walking on level ground, and stairs / slopes walk up

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