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Space Station Motors Power Improved, Energy-Efficient Prosthetic Leg

Powerful new motors originally designed for a robotic arm on the International Space Station are the key to a robotic prosthetic leg prototype from the University of Michigan  that has a more natural gait and improved energy efficiency over other designs. The strong motors powering the knee and ankle can propel the user’s body while allowing the knee to swing freely. Regenerative breaking charges the battery with energy captured each time the foot hits the ground. This allows the leg to more than double a typical prosthetic user’s walking needs, with only one charge per day. The amputees who tested the prosthetics said they could feel the leg helping them push off the ground as they walk.

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Aerospace Automation Energy Medical Motion Control Power Robotics

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    Transcript

    00:00:02 >> GREGG: They don't want to feel like they're riding a horse. They want to feel like the leg is part of their body, moving exactly the way they intended to move. [Music] >> NARRATOR: A typical robotic prosthetic leg uses a motor with many gears. Those gears add weight, make the joint stiffer, and produce unwanted noise. So University of Michigan associate professor Robert Gregg and his team tried out a new motor. >> GREGG: We've worked with four subjects so far. They feel the push off, the propulsion that the leg provides. It feels like it gives them power to their walking gait. We're saying OK, instead of going towards a really tiny motor and you have to introduce all this gearing to get all the torque you need. We're just going to use newer, emerging motor technologies

    00:00:49 that allow us to have high torque from the beginning and then introduce a small minimal gearing to get to the torque that we need. It's a frameless motor, meaning that we have to design the support structure around it. We had to design all the housing, the bearings, the coupling to the gears. By getting rid of most of the gearing, you don't really hear it, you don't have to worry about the stiffness that the gears would introduce. We want to be able to seamlessly transition from sitting to standing to walking to climbing stairs at any speed of any inclination. That's the whole purpose of a robotic leg. [Music]