OPEN-SOURCE LEG

In the United States alone, hundreds of thousands of leg amputees have a reduced quality of life due to persistent mobility limitations. In an effort to alleviate the challenges that amputees face, much time, effort, and money has gone into researching prosthetic leg hardware and control system design. However, advancement in the field of prosthetic leg control strategies has been stunted by the lack of a uniform hardware system. Currently, prior to entering control strategy research, a group must design and manufacture its own hardware, which may take many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even once a leg is manufactured and a control system has been implemented, though, the comparison of control systems across the field is confounded by the use of different prosthetic hardware. Thus the entire control systems research field is fragmented across different hardware designs.

Primary location: Ann Arbor United States