Previous research has shown that the effective use of inertial motion (i.e.,less or no torque input at the knee joint) plays an important role in achievinga smooth gait of transfemoral prostheses in the swing phase. In our previousresearch, a method for generating a timed knee trajectory close to able-bodiedindividuals, which leads to sufficient clearance between the foot and the floorand the knee extension, was proposed using the inertial motion. Limb motionsare known to correlate with each other during walking. This phenomenon iscalled kinematic synergy. In the present study, we measure gaits in levelwalking of able-bodied individuals with a wide range of walking velocities. Weshow that this kinematic synergy also exists between the motions of the intactlimbs and those of the knee as determined by the inertial motion technique. Wethen propose a new method for generating the motion of the knee joint using itsinertial motion close to the able-bodied individuals in mid-swing based on itskinematic synergy, such that the method can adapt to the changes in the motionvelocity. The numerical simulation results show that the proposed methodachieves prosthetic walking similar to that of able-bodied individuals with awide range of constant walking velocities and termination of walking fromsteady-state walking. Further investigations have found that a kinematicsynergy also exists at the start of walking. Overall, our method successfullyachieves knee motion generation from the initiation of walking throughsteady-state walking with different velocities until termination of walking.
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