I-Corps: Automatic Tuning for Prosthesis Based on Physiological Feedback

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是提供自动假肢调整技术，使截肢者步态受损时的代谢能量消耗得到优化。该产品将简化调整过程，并将提高动力假肢的性能，以更好地协助用户，提供更多的平衡，同时保持较低的能量消耗在残余肌肉上。由于该产品的用户友好型结构，它可以很容易地在设备较少的环境中使用，这将使该技术更容易获得，并消除长途通勤到假肢实验室或诊所的不适。这是一种高性价比的解决方案，不仅可以更广泛地使用动力假肢腿，还可以提高假肢实验室和诊所的效率，为更多的假肢用户服务。这将降低维护动力假肢的成本，并扩大提供这类服务的设施。此外，由于该系统是自动化的，临床医生将取代一些通常由假肢专家完成的任务，这有望降低总体成本。这个I-Corps项目将探索核心技术的商业潜力。下肢截肢者使用假肢进行日常行走；然而，与正常步态的人相比，使用假肢走路通常需要更多的代谢能量消耗。目前最先进的技术提供了动力假肢，以更好地帮助截肢者。为了有最好的辅助和增加平衡，这些腿需要一个细致的调整程序。目前由假肢专家使用基于观察的方法进行；然而，这种方法不准确，缺乏客观性。该技术能够无线采集人体区域传感器信号，并提供计算算法自动设置动力义肢，为截肢者步态受损的代谢能量消耗优化提供了一种新颖有效的技术。这项技术将为用户提供准确和客观的调整，这是具有成本效益的，因为它可以减少频繁的假肢诊所对假肢适应的需求。此外，客观准确的调整将最大限度地利用动力义肢。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to provide automatic prosthetic tuning technology that will enable the optimization of metabolic energy expenditure in impaired gait of amputee users. This product will simplify the process of tuning and will increase the performance of powered prosthetic legs to better assist users and provide more balance while maintaining a lower energy expenditure on residual muscles. Due to the product's user-friendly structure, it could easily be used in less-equipped environments, which will make the technology more accessible and eliminate the discomfort of long commutes to the prosthetic laboratory or clinics. This is a cost-effective solution for not only broader use of powered prosthetic legs, but also better efficiency of prosthetic laboratory and clinics to serve more prosthetic users. This will reduce the cost of maintaining powered prosthetic legs and, broaden the facilities that would offer these types of services. Also, since the system is automated a clinician will replace some of the tasks typically done by prosthetic experts, which is expected to reduce overall costs.This I-Corps project will explore the commercial potential of the core technology. Lower limb amputees use prosthetics for daily walking; however, walking with prosthesis typically requires much more metabolic energy expenditure than people with normal gait. Current state-of-the-art technology provides powered prosthetic legs to better assist amputees. To have the best assistance and to increase balance, these legs require a meticulous tuning procedure. It is currently conducted using an observation-based approach by prosthetic experts; however, this approach is not accurate and lacks objectivity. The developed technology is able to wirelessly collect body area sensor signals and provide computational algorithms to automatically setup powered prosthetic legs, which provides a novel and efficient technique for optimizing the metabolic energy expenditure in impaired gait of amputees. This technology will enable an accurate and objective tuning for the users, which is cost effective because it may reduce the need for frequent prosthetic clinics for prosthesis adaptation. In addition, the objective and accurate tuning will maximize the use of powered prosthetic legs.