A novel concept of passive knee prosthesis with multiple stiffnesses to support overground walking and sit-to-stand

Guiaux Brinon, Julien;Ronsse, Renaud
(2024) 2024 10th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference for Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob) — Location: Heidelberg, Germany (1.September.2024)

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(en) Over the last decades, active knee prostheses demonstrated their ability to support most daily-life locomotion tasks for transfemoral amputees. However, passive devices are still used by a majority of patients due to their simplicity of use, low cost, independence with respect to an external power source, and adaptability across various gait profiles in daily tasks. A key challenge in the development of passive prostheses is to have them supporting the largest possible amount of locomotion tasks in a strictly passive manner. Following a recent trend promoting layered prostheses with active asneeded assistance, this paper focuses on the development of a passive knee prosthesis enabling walking on level ground and providing passive assistance for sit-to-stand-to-sit transitions. The fundamental feature on our innovative concept consists in relying on four passive mechanisms in order to render multiple stiffnesses adapted to the selected task or its specific phases (stance/swing). This paper reports the conceptual design of the prosthesis, its mechanical dimensioning, and a first embodiment fitting into the volume of existing devices.
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Guiaux Brinon, J., & Ronsse, R. (2024). A novel concept of passive knee prosthesis with multiple stiffnesses to support overground walking and sit-to-stand. 2024 10th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics (BioRob 2024), 204-210. https://doi.org/10.1109/BioRob60516.2024.10719856 (Original work published 2024)