Category: News

Kuntz Lab paper, “Screw-tip Soft Magnetically Steerable Needles” has been published in the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics (TMRB) journal....

Lower-limb-powered prostheses can provide users with volitional control of ambulation. To this end, they require a sensing modality that reliably interprets user intention to move. Ultrasound has been shown to have better resolution and specificity than surface EMG. However, this technology has yet to be integrated into lower-limb prostheses. In this paper, we show that A-mode ultrasound sensing can reliably predict the prosthesis walking kinematics of individuals with a transfemoral amputation. Ultrasound features from the residual limb of 9 transfemoral amputee subjects were recorded with A-mode ultrasound during walking with their passive prosthesis. The manuscript is freely available at this...

Torque-sensitive transmissions have emerged as promising solutions to meet this need by significantly increasing actuator efficiency and power density, but their modeling and analysis remain an open research topic. In this paper, we introduce the sensitivity between input displacement and output torque as a key metric to analyze the performance of these complex mechanisms in dynamic tasks. Our results show that sensitivity analysis is a valuable tool for designers to systematically analyze and create transmission systems capable of human-like physical behavior. The manuscript can be downloaded freely at this link: Actuators | Free Full-Text | Analysis and Validation of Sensitivity...