This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/opensource by /u/newerest on 2024-03-24 20:21:08.
We were compelled to create the Open-Source Leg after broader discussions in the field showed that the control of these technologies has been the greatest barrier preventing their clinical success. In the past, research of prosthetic hardware design and control has been done in silos. Each researcher develops their own robotic leg system on which to test their control strategies or biomechanical hypotheses. This has led to success in the short term, since each researcher produces publications and furthers knowledge. However, in the long term, this fragmented research approach prevents research results from impacting people with disabilities—culminating in an overarching failure of the field to truly have the impact that motivated it. Without a standardized hardware / software platform, it is difficult to compare results across research groups studying the control of these systems. In addition, continually recreating robotic legs for each group is costly in both time and money, preventing these resources from addressing the actual barriers that stem from the control of these systems. Indeed, the intricate challenges linked to various aspects of prosthetic leg control demands the collective effort of top researchers conducting pioneering work. Thus, to close this gap, we created an open-access platform that not only facilitates research of prosthetic control but also offers a common framework to test and evaluate these strategies—the Open-Source Leg.