Development of an active force plate for testing lower-limb prostheses

In the recent past, lower-limb prostheses technological advancement mostly concerned the possibility of integrating ever smaller and more powerful electronic components instead of new materials and topologies. Although sophisticated, products currently on themarket do not guarantee the same opportunities of their biological counterpart. According to authors’ opinion this deficiency is principally due to the lack of suitable development and verification methods. As a consequence, our research group is developing a bench for testing transfemoral prostheses. The setup is briefly recalled in this paper. Then, attention is focused on the subsystem designed for reproducing the loads acting on the foot due to reaction with the ground.