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Thesis

Pattern Classification of Terrain During Amputee Walking

Farrell, M. T. "Pattern Classification of Terrain During Amputee Walking"

Abstract

In this thesis I study the role of extrinsic versus intrinsic sensing and determine a robust set of sensors from physical and reliability constraints for a terrain adaptation in a robotic ankle prosthesis. Further, during this thesis I collect a novel data-set that contains seven able-bodied participants walking over 19 terrain transitions and 7 non-amputees walking over 9 transitions, forming the largest collection of transitions to date using an exhaustive set of sensors: inertial measurement units, gyroscopes, kinematics from motion capture, and electromyography from 16 sites on the lower limbs for non-amputee subjects and 9 sites or amputee subjects. This work extends previous work \cite{huang1} by using more conditions, a larger subject group, and more sensors on amputees, and includes non-amputees.

I present a novel machine learning algorithm that uses sensor data during rapid transitions from pre-foothold to just prior to post-foothold to predict different terrain boundaries. This advances the field of biomechatronics, our understanding of terrain adaptation in people both with and without amputations, contributes to the development of a fully terrain adaptive robotic ankle prosthesis, and improves the quality of life for the physically challenged. Specifically we set out to prove between pre and post-foothold the ankle and knee positions calculated using an IMU attached to an amputee's powered prosthetic ankle can discriminate with greater than 99\% accuracy between 9 conditions. Our results suggest that myography as a non-volitional sensing modality for terrain adaptive protheses was not needed

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