Understanding the Preferences for Lower-Limb Prosthesis

In the United States, approximately 1.6 million people were living with a limb loss. Among the amputee population, lower-limb amputation is the most common type, accounting for 65% of all amputations. In clinics, the prosthesis control is tuned by a prosthetist manually and heuristically. Specifically, a prosthetist would first observe a patient’s gait and choose some relevant parameters based on their experience, and manually tune one parameter control at a time. Then, the patents would walk again and the prosthetist would ask the patient some questions like “Do you like it” or “Does this feel better”, based on the verbal feedback and observations on the gait, the prosthetist would tune the parameters again. This process iterates until the gait looks controlled and balanced, and can be very time-consuming. 

Goals 

The high-level objective is to understand user preference for prosthesis settings, thus to inform the design of the prosthesis. This study revealed the factors contributing to the wearers’ preference for prosthesis settings.