Developing Prosthetic Legs That Recover From Stumbles

URI researcher trips amputees in effort to develop improved prosthetic legs 09/15/09. According to the URI researcher, the population of lower-limb amputees in the United States is large and growing, especially so during this time of war, and she believes that the design of a high performing prosthetic leg is critical to reducing the burden of this disability.  During the experimental phase of the study, Dr. Huang is collecting data from able-bodied individuals and those using prosthetic legs to determine what kind of physiological signals can be detected for use in developing a stumble detection system. Once she has analyzed the data, she hopes to develop an algorithm that can be used in computer-controlled artificial limbs to provide active stumble recovery. University of Rhode Island via Eurekalert!