Toward Balance Recovery with Active Leg Prostheses Using Neuromuscular Model Control

Abstract

We seek to improve balance recovery in amputee gait by taking advantage of the advent of active leg prostheses. Toward this goal, we use inspiration from biology to identify reflex-like control strategies that stabilize gait, refine these strategies in simulations of amputee locomotion, and evaluate the resulting controllers in experiments with human subjects wearing custom prototypes of active leg prostheses. Our results so far indicate that reflex-like control can improve balance recovery over existing control strategies used in active leg prostheses. However, further research on the hardware realization of the control is needed to more rigorously evaluate its potential benefit to amputee locomotion.