Powered Sit-to-Stand and Assistive Stand-to-Sit Framework for a Powered Transfemoral Prosthesis

This work extends the three level powered knee and ankle prosthesis control framework previously developed by the authors by adding sitting mode. A middle level finite state based impedance controller is designed to accommodate sitting, sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit transitions. Moreover, a high level Gaussian Mixture Model based intent recognizer is developed to distinguish between standing and sitting modes and switch the middle level controllers accordingly. Experimental results with unilateral transfemoral amputee subject show that sitting down and standing up intent can be inferred from the prosthesis sensor signals by the intent recognizer. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the prosthesis generates net active power of 50 W during standing up and dissipates up to 50 W of power during stand-to-sit transition at the knee joint.