Golshan Farshad, Lemaire Edward, Gholizadeh Hossein, Nielen David, Baddour Natalie
IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2025;33:3432-3442. doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2025.3602715.
Hip disarticulation (HD) amputees face mobility challenges due to the loss of hip, knee, and ankle joints. Current hip-knee-ankle-foot (HKAF) prostheses are entirely passive and require excessive compensatory movements to operate, leading to fatigue and long-term complications. Seeking to address these limitations, this study developed a HD user-centric, walking speed adaptable control strategy paired with a hip-motorized HKAF to emulate gait characteristics of transfemoral amputees. A prototype "Power Hip" was instrumented with internal sensors (IMUs, load cells, joint encoders) to create a prosthetic unit that could be worn without the need for external sensors. A hierarchical gait control strategy was developed to utilize these sensors to calculate the desired hip states and actuate the joint. To evaluate capabilities of the control strategy, an HD amputee participant was recruited to undergo training with Power Hip. Once training was complete, motion captured kinematics and onboard sensor data were analyzed across slow, self-paced, and fast walking speed trials. The Power Hip enabled walking speeds of 0.69-1.01 m/s, with stride parameters aligning with transfemoral amputee outcome measures. Hip extension velocities (60.2-104.9°/s) matched transfemoral kinematics, though swing-phase knee flexion magnitude and velocity were reduced compared to transfemoral benchmarks. The prototype demonstrated a 52° hip range of motion, surpassing conventional passive hip joints, and adapted to speed changes automatically. This research paves the way for advanced prosthetic solutions to improve quality of life for people with hip-level amputations.
髋关节离断（HD）截肢者由于髋、膝和踝关节的缺失而面临行动能力挑战。当前的髋-膝-踝-足（HKAF）假肢完全是被动的，操作时需要过多的代偿动作，会导致疲劳和长期并发症。为了解决这些局限性，本研究开发了一种以HD用户为中心、可适应步行速度的控制策略，并与带髋关节动力的HKAF假肢相结合，以模拟经股骨截肢者的步态特征。一个原型“动力髋关节”配备了内部传感器（惯性测量单元、称重传感器、关节编码器），以创建一个无需外部传感器即可佩戴的假肢单元。开发了一种分层步态控制策略，利用这些传感器来计算所需的髋关节状态并驱动关节。为了评估该控制策略的能力，招募了一名HD截肢者参与者使用动力髋关节进行训练。训练完成后，对慢走、自然步速和快走速度试验中的运动捕捉运动学和车载传感器数据进行了分析。动力髋关节实现了0.69-1.01米/秒的步行速度，步幅参数与经股骨截肢者的结果指标一致。髋关节伸展速度（60.2-104.9°/秒）与经股骨运动学相匹配，不过与经股骨基准相比，摆动期膝关节屈曲幅度和速度有所降低。该原型展示了52°的髋关节活动范围，超过了传统的被动髋关节，并且能自动适应速度变化。这项研究为先进的假肢解决方案铺平了道路，以改善髋关节截肢者的生活质量。
