Building ankle prostheses and orthoses for patients who lost their lower limb or are missing gait functions due to neurological or muscular deficits has taken a large amount of research. This will be a brief overview over existing devices with short descriptions of principle and function. This list is not complete and will be updated.
Name | Location | Year | Publication | |
| Northwestern University | 2010 | "Net external energy of the biologic and prosthetic ankle during gait initiation" | experimental study on gait initiation |
SACH, Carbon Copy II, Seattle Lite, Quantum, Flex-Foot | Rancho Los Amigos Medical Center | 1995 | "Energy expenditure during ambulation in dysvascular and traumatic below-knee amputees: a comparison of five prosthetic feet" | comparative study of energy storing and releasing prostheses |
Sparky | West Point / Arizona State | 2010 | "An active foot-ankle prosthesis with biomechanical energy regeneration" | inverted pendulum,
80-100Nm, 170W motor output |
Sparky3 | Arizona State | 2008 | " SPARKy 3: Design of an active robotic ankle prosthesis with two actuated degrees of freedom using regenerative kinetics" | large size, large outline |
| Marquette University | 2012 | "Design of an active ankle-foot prosthesis utilizing a four-bar mechanism" | four bar mechanism, based on Winter data |
| University of Washington | 2000 | | theoretical work |
Pantoe 1 | Peking University | 2010 | "PANTOE 1: Biomechanical design of powered ankle-foot prosthesis with compliant joints and segmented foot" | monoarticular, 83W motor |
iWalk | MIT Media Lab | 2007 | "Biomechanical design of a powered ankle-foot prosthesis" | 350W and 140Nm (required), serial and parallel compliance |
| Vanderbilt University | 2013 | "Preliminary evaluation of a walking controller for a powered ankle prosthesis" | 70Nm, 170W |
“The advantages gained through the addition of powered actuators are always coupled with an increase in size, weight, and complex control systems. These trade-offs played a large role throughout the design process of the prosthesis developed in this article.” [cite source=’doi’]10.1115/1.4006436[/cite]
“[…] it is challenging to build an ankle-foot prosthesis that matches the size and weight of the human ankle, but still provides a sufficiently large instantaneous power output and torque to propel an amputee.” [cite source=’doi’]10.1109/ICORR.2007.4428441[/cite]