Unifying the gait cycle in the control of a powered prosthetic leg

This paper presents a novel control strategy for an above-knee powered prosthetic leg that unifies the entire gait cycle, eliminating the need to switch between controllers during different periods of gait. Current control methods divide the gait cycle into several sequential periods each with independent controllers, resulting in many patient-specific control parameters and switching rules that must be tuned by clinicians. Having a single controller could reduce the number of control parameters to be tuned for each patient, thereby reducing the clinical time and effort involved in fitting a powered prosthesis for a lower-limb amputee. Using the Discrete Fourier Transformation, a single virtual constraint is derived that exactly characterizes the desired actuated joint motion over the entire gait cycle. Because the virtual constraint is defined as a periodic function of a monotonically increasing phase variable, no switching or resetting is necessary within or across gait cycles. The output function is zeroed using feedback linearization to produce a single, unified controller. The method is illustrated with simulations of a powered knee-ankle prosthesis in an amputee biped model and with examples of systematically generated output functions for different walking speeds.