Experimental Evaluation of Simple Prosthetic Arm Usage for a Patient with Four-limb Deficiency Walking on Powered Knee Prostheses

Walking is one of the most fundamental and convenient locomotion to move for relatively short distance. Walking behaver is achieved by combination of whole body motions of legs, arms, trunk and other parts of body. Human walks extremely in an efficient way using musculoskeletal system, and, once human loses some part of body, he is often unable to walk normally. Especially, it is quite challenging for a patient with severe disability such as four limb deficiency to walk like a normal human even with cutting-edge prosthetic technologies. In this study, suitable walking behavior for a patient with four limb deficiency is investigated with simple prosthetic arms (PAs) and powered knee prostheses knee with a series elastic actuator (PKP-SEA). As a result, unique walking gait is acquired unlike normal human. Moreover, prosthetic arm usage contributes mainly in sagittal plane to increase his stride.