A Unified Controller for Walking on Even and Uneven Terrain With a Powered Ankle Prosthesis

This paper describes the development of a controller for a powered ankle prosthesis that is intended to provide appropriate biomechanical behavior for walking on both even and uneven terrain without having to explicitly detect local slope to do so. In order to inform development of the controller, the authors conducted a small study of five healthy subjects walking on even and uneven terrain. Data from the healthy subject study were used to formulate behavioral models for the healthy ankle, which were then implemented as controller behaviors in the powered prosthesis prototype and comparatively assessed on an amputee subject.