Open source prosthetics! 🦿 A powered prosthetic leg runs its control loop at a few hundred hertz, on a battery computer strapped to someone’s shin, and the failure mode is literally a person falling over. The Neurobionics Lab at Michigan says it plainly about their Open Source Leg: labs each build their own prosthesis, the mechanical designs differ so much that control strategies can’t be fairly compared, and the field’s impact on amputees suffers for it. So they built one leg for everyone to use. → pancake motors from the drone industry, geared down to trade speed for torque and finer control → belt drives, no precision-machined parts, easy to assemble and take apart → modular: knee, ankle or both, with onboard power and control electronics → optional series elasticity at the knee, so researchers choose the stiffness → a Raspberry Pi running the control Elliott Rouse, who directs the lab: “we hope our bionic leg will unite researchers with a common hardware platform. AWESOME STUFF! ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →