An intent recognition strategy for transfemoral amputee ambulation across different locomotion modes

Powered lower limb prostheses, capable of multiple locomotion modes, are being developed for transfemoral amputees. Current devices do not seamlessly transition between modes such as level walking, stairs and slopes. The purpose of this study was to develop an intent recognition system and test its performance across five different modes. A Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) was used for classification of neural and mechanical signals while four amputees completed a circuit containing level-walking, ramp ascent, ramp descent, stair ascent and stair descent. Our results indicate that transitional and steady-state stair steps had a high recognition rate (>99%), while ramp steps were significantly more difficult to classify (p