Real Time Estimation of the Pose of a Lower Limb Prosthesis from a Single Shank Mounted IMU

The command of a microprocessor-controlled lower limb prosthesis classically relies on the gait mode recognition. Real time computation of the pose of the prosthesis (i.e., attitude and trajectory) is useful for the correct identification of these modes. In this paper, we present and evaluate an algorithm for the computation of the pose of a lower limb prosthesis, under the constraints of real time applications and limited computing resources. This algorithm uses a nonlinear complementary filter with a variable gain to estimate the attitude of the shank. The trajectory is then computed from the double integration of the accelerometer data corrected from the kinematics of a model of inverted pendulum rolling on a curved arc foot. The results of the proposed algorithm are evaluated against the optoelectronic measurements of walking trials of three people with transfemoral amputation. The root mean square error (RMSE) of the estimated attitude is around 3°, close to the Kalman-based algorithm results reported in similar conditions. The real time correction of the integration of the inertial measurement unit (IMU) acceleration decreases the trajectory error by a factor of 2.5 compared to its direct integration which will result in an improvement of the gait mode recognition.