For many amputees, prosthetic legs offer a chance to regain mobility. But traditional prosthetics can feel clunky and unnatural.
This brain-controlled bionic leg allows wearers to control the prosthetic foot using their thoughts alone. The study demonstrated the participants’ ability to walk more naturally, handle stairs, and easily maneuver around barriers. Typically, amputation surgery severs the connections between muscles that normally work together. This disrupts the natural communication between these muscles and the nervous system.
“With the AMI amputation procedure, to the greatest extent possible, we attempt to connect native agonists to native antagonists in a physiological way so that after amputation, a person can move their full phantom limb with physiologic levels of proprioception and range of movement,” explained Herr. The neuroprosthetic interface comes into action after the AMI surgery reconnects the muscles. It uses electrodes on the residual limb to detect and monitor these muscle contractions.