Comparison of passive and active prosthetic knee joint kinematics during swing phase of gait

The goal of this paper was to assess this hypothesis that a powered prosthetic knee, to which net power is delivered, is capable of emulating the swing phase of the biological knee better than an energetically passive knee. Lower extremity was modeled as a two-degree of freedom linkage, for which hip and knee were joints. Based on an inverse dynamics approach, computer simulations were carried out to calculate both active and passive prosthetic knee angles during swing phase of gait. Results showed that since an active prosthetic knee can deliver power, it can mimic the normal knee flexion angle better than a passive one. Consequently, it can lead to a more symmetric, and therefore, more efficient gait.