Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Open Access Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MS)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

Advisor 1

Mo Rastgaar

Committee Member 1

Ossama O. Abdelkhalik

Committee Member 2

Timothy C. Havens

Committee Member 3

Nina Mahmoudian

Abstract

Active ankle prostheses controllers are demonstrating gaining smart features to improve the safety and comfort offor users. The perception of user intention to modulate the ankle dynamics is a well-known example of such feature. But not much work focused on the perception of the environment, nor how the environment should be included in the mechanical design and control of the prosthesisprostheses. The proposed work aims to improve the feasibility of integrate the environment perception integration intoto the prostheses controllersler, and to define the desired ankle dynamics, as mechanical impedance, duringof the human walk on different environmental settings. As a preliminary work on environment perception, a vision system was developed that can estimate the ground profileslope and height. The desired prosthesis impedance dynamics is was defined as the dynamics mechanical impedance of a healthy ankle; , therefore,which required the a system identification methodof the human ankle was developed. Simulations showed the inertia parameters of a rigid bodymockup foot can be estimated. Further experiments will show the accuracy of environment perception and of the impedance estimation.

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