Prosthetics research to be based on simple robotic motions

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Researchers designing prosthetics for injured patients and amputees are returning to the basic walking gait of simple robots to better understand how people walk. The concept of passive dynamic walkers allows great flexibility and functionality on a minimal power supply. The motion mechanics occur naturally instead of being created by mechanical means, like those on advanced robots.

Original source:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=7666297

Summary:

• Simple robots that toddle along like an old-fashioned child's toy offer a more realistic and efficient model of human walking than more sophisticated models, researchers said on Thursday.
• They hope their back-to-basics approach can be used not only to design more efficient robots, but also prosthetics for injured patients and amputees, and to understand better how people walk.
• The idea is based on "passive-dynamic walkers" -- devices that can walk down a slight slope using only gravity and carefully balanced, pendulum-like legs.
• These unpowered walkers can produce a surprisingly human-like gait, three separate teams of researchers report in this week's issue of the journal Science.
• Adding a tiny bit of power, as much as is used by a small fluorescent light bulb, allows an element of control for the walker to make more than a few steps and adjust to differing terrain, including level ground.
• "We can let the mechanics take care of a lot of the motion as opposed to motors," Andy Ruina of Cornell University in New York, who helped design one of the robot walkers.
• "For a robot to ever be practical it has to be able to run for a while," Ruina told a news conference sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
• The concept is simple, said Ruina -- the legs act like sticks attached to hinges, and swing back and forth with a pendulum motion.
• "Mainstream" robots, on the other hand, have every movement carefully controlled and powered.
• Steven Collins of Cornell, who is now at the University of Michigan, added a tiny bit of motorized propulsion at the robot's ankles.
• "At each step it pushes off with its back foot," Collins said.

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