Thomas Schluszas, Brandyn Greczek, James Caputo, Emma Moore, Tehran Brown, Jordan Evans, Jesse DeWerth, Joshua Korsness, Logan Nelson, Peter Lee, Ty Morris, and Nicholas Vezina
On average, people with prosthetic legs require about 80% more energy to walk than able-bodied individuals. Most commercially available prosthetic legs are unpowered or energetically passive, meaning that they can store or dissipate energy, but not generate it. To address these problems, the team has developed a prosthetic leg that includes a powered knee and powered three degree of freedom ankle. The design features high-powered series elastic actuators capable of delivering enough power to run and walk. An impedance based control system is used with sensory to detect the environment and user intent. With these features, the design aims to make the prosthetic leg as biomimetic as possible while also extending the capabilities of actively powered prostheses.