PFI-RP: Developing Market-Ready Affordable Robotic Lower-Limb Prostheses through Unified Joint Actuator Design and AI-Enhanced Multi-Modal Interactive Control

这一创新-研究伙伴关系伙伴关系（PFI-RP）项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是提供一种价格非常低廉的动力下肢假肢，为截肢者的日常生活提供多功能（多模式）操作。 目前在美国大约有200万人失去肢体，其中一半是下肢截肢者 目前可用的假肢装置大多是被动的，不能在运动中产生关节动力。 因此，被动假肢使用者在日常生活中通常会经历相当大的困难和不适，例如，无法爬楼梯，以明显不对称的方式行走，以及在行走中消耗更多的能量。 有两种动力假肢装置用于下肢截肢者，但由于成本高、控制困难和用户意图识别等问题，报告的成功有限。 拟议项目的研究和开发工作旨在通过创造一种创新的下肢假肢来克服这些问题，该假肢结合了低成本，重量轻，高可靠性和任务多功能性。 PFI团队期望借着这款创新义肢装置，加速下肢截肢者接受先进的机器人义肢，并显著改善他们的行动能力和日常生活质量。拟议项目将探索多种创新技术，以开发新的动力下肢义肢。 首先，它包括开发一种新型的通用核心组件膝踝关节假体（C3 KAP）设计技术，提供简单、低成本和高度可靠的假肢关节，可以轻松配置为假肢膝关节或踝关节，并辅以一种新型的可变刚度力矩测力传感器，为假肢控制提供灵敏和可靠的载荷测量。 其次，它旨在开发一种新的双模态假肢运动控制技术，为个人用户提供自然的腿部摆动运动，交互式站立相位控制以及简单和可扩展的控制器调整。 最后，PFI团队将创建一个先进的基于AI的意图识别器，以识别假肢用户的运动模式和期望的模式转换，使截肢者能够享受真正的多模式运动的自由（步行和上下楼梯），该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project is the availability of a highly affordable powered lower-limb prosthesis that provides versatile (multi-modal) operation in amputee users’ daily life. Currently there are approximately 2 million people living with limb losses in the U.S., and half of them are lower-limb amputees. Currently available prosthetic devices are mostly passive, unable to generate joint power in locomotion. As such, the passive prosthesis users typically experience substantial difficulty and discomfort in daily life, for example, being unable to climb stairs, walking in an obviously asymmetric way, and expending more energy in walking. There are two powered prosthetic devices for lower-limb amputees, but limited success has been reported due to issues such as high cost and difficulties in control and user intent recognition. The research and development efforts in the proposed project aim at overcoming these problems by creating an innovative lower-limb prosthesis that combines low cost, light weight, high reliability, and task versatility. With this innovative prosthetic device, the PFI team anticipates accelerating the lower-limb amputees’ acceptance of advanced robotic prostheses and significantly improve their mobility and quality of life in daily living.The proposed project will explore multiple innovative technologies towards the development of the new powered lower-limb prosthesis. Firstly, it includes the development of a novel Common-Core-Components Knee-Ankle Prosthesis (C3KAP) design technology providing simple, low-cost, and highly reliable prosthetic joints that can be easily configured as prosthetic knee or ankle, supplemented by a novel variable stiffness force-moment load cell providing sensitive and reliable load measurement for prosthesis control. Secondly, it aims to develop a new bi-modal prosthesis motion control technology that provides natural leg swing motion, interactive stance-phase control, as well as simple and standardizable controller tuning for individual users. Finally, the PFI team will create an advanced AI-based intent recognizer to recognize the prosthesis users’ locomotive mode and desired mode transition, enabling amputees to enjoy the freedom of true multi-modal locomotion (walking and stair ascent/descent), significantly improved mobility and quality of life.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.