抄録
Stair ascent is still difficult for transfemoral prosthesis users. So far, a passive knee joint unit for transfemoral prosthesis developed in our previous study. However, experimental results demonstrated that the users faced difficulty in the load response phase. In addition, large moment power of the prosthetic side's hip joint in the stance phase was required, leading to an imbalance of power consumption between the intact and prosthetic sides. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to develop a passive transfemoral prosthesis for stair ascent, which had a knee extension function associated with a movable ankle joint during the stance phase in order to change the range of the force that can be exerted on the prosthesis by users to emerge the designed functions. Stair ascent experiments demonstrated that that stair ascending was achieved with the proposed prosthesis in the step-over-step manner. In addition, it was shown that the hip joint moment power reduced to equalize the joint moment powers in both sides.
