Abstract
This paper deals with the development of an A/K prosthesis that is able to regulate its knee-jointtorque automatically according to walking period. First, the development of the new A/K prostheses WLP-5 and WLP-6 are discussed. From the results of a simulation analysis of the movement of the A/K prosthesis during a swing phase. The necessity of a little driving torque around the knee joint at the beginning of the extention was designated. The A/K prosthesis that had the following two mechanisms were performed. 1) A mechanism to change its damping torque around the knee joint according to walking period. 2) A mechanism to generate a little driving torque around the knee joint by self-accumulated power. From the walking experiments by the amputees, It was confirmed that a wide range of walking period (1.1〜1.5sec) was possible for them by wearing the WLP-6 system. Second, the approach to prediction of the walking period of the next step using EMG is discussed. A surface electrode and an electronic circuit for processing EMG were developed. A new method of composing EMG data having the effect of Hi-pass filtering was introduced, and its effect was verified theoretically and experimentally. The prediction-algorithm of the next step's walking period using EMG was introduced. From walking experiments by the amputees, it was verified that the next step's walking period could be precisely predicted.
