The knee joint design and control of above-knee intelligent bionic leg based on magneto-rheological damper

The above-knee intelligent bionic leg is very helpful to amputees in the area of rehabilitation medicine. This paper first introduces the functional demand of the above-knee prosthesis design. Then, the advantages of the four-bar link mechanism and the magneto-rheological (MR) damper are analyzed in detail. The fixed position of the MR damper is optimized and a virtual prototype of knee joint is given. In the end, the system model of kinematics, dynamics, and controller are given and a control experiment is performed. The control experiment indicates that the intelligent bionic leg with multi-axis knee is able to realize gait tracking of the amputee's healthy leg based on semi-active control of the MR damper.