In this study, the function to test the above-knee prosthesis performance and the concept design of hip motion simulator are shown.
In optimization, objective function determines whether the handicapped wearing some above-knee prosthesises, minimizing hip moment, can do walk as possible as similiar to normal gait. It is optimized using design variables as hip motion, output variables as joint angles, hip linear motion, and hip moment. Design variables are coefficients of harmonic functions, which express hip angular acceleration and hip linear acceleration. By this way, we can find hip-input(hip angular acceleration and hip linear acceleration) as smooth curves. If directly these input are defined as design variables, results vibrate very severely, and deviate from real normal gait data too far.
Simulator which is able to simulate hip motion is designed conceptly. This needs to simulate optimized hip motion which the handicapped act. Simulator has three motors and two slider-guide sets. The first motor and slider-guide set simulate horizontal linear motions of hip, the second motor and slider-guide set simulate vertical direction linear motions of hip, and the third motor simulates angular motions of hip.
