The Dawn of Powered Lower-Limb Prostheses series of articles describes the progress of prosthetic technology toward powered lower-limb prostheses. In the first article, the two approaches most prevalent in the academic literature, the BiOM foot and the Vanderbilt knee, were described (The O&P EDGE, March 2013). The second article described some of the alternative approaches to external power, such as pleated pneumatic actuators, SpringActive’s robotic tendon designs, Össur’s POWER KNEE™, and the antagonistic pairing of series elastic actuators in a more energetically conservative approach to an externally powered knee joint (The O&P EDGE, September 2013). This installment describes the progress that is being made as researchers work toward control of powered prostheses through the user’s myoelectric signals.
