Evaluation of a Viscoelastic Ankle-Foot Prosthesis at Slow andNormal Walking Speeds on an Able-Bodied Subject

Objectives: this paper describes further improvement and preliminarily evaluation of a novelviscoelastic ankle-foot prosthesis prototype. the objective was to control the ankle hysteresis at slow andnormal walking speeds.methods: inspired by the ankle biomechanics, in which the hysteresis differs based on the gait speeds, amanually damping control mechanism imbedded in the prosthesis for adjusting the ankle damping at slowand normal walking speeds. the prototype was then preliminarily tested on an able-bodied subjectwearing an adaptor which simulates the amputee walking. the ankle joint kinetics and kinematics weremeasured in a gait analysis lab at different walking speeds.results: the results suggest that the viscoelastic ankle foot prosthesis prototype could provide a smoothnormal-like walking for most of the measured gait characteristics in slow and normal speeds.discussion: therefore, it is suggested to apply a controllable damping mechanism based on the gaitspeeds in the design of new prosthetic feet.