Myoelectric control of a powered knee prosthesis for volitional movement during non-weight-bearing activities

This paper describes a means of controlling the knee movement of a powered knee prosthesis during non-weight-bearing activity such as sitting, by utilizing surface EMG from the quadriceps and hamstring muscle groups in the residual limb. The method was implemented on a powered prosthesis on three amputee subjects, and experimental results are presented characterizing the ability of the amputee subjects to control knee motion. A comparison of the trajectory tracking error between the amputees' prosthetic and intact knees indicates that the EMG-based volitional controller provides similar trajectory tracking capability to the native (i.e., intact) knee joint.