A1 Open-Source Bionic Leg | Prof. Elliott Rouse and Prof. Levi Hargrove

Interview with the senior authors of the article “Design and clinical implementation of an open-source bionic leg” (Azocar et al., Nat Biomed Eng, 2020), Prof. Elliott Rouse, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, and Prof. Levi Hargrove, Ph.D., at the Sherly Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern University. We discuss their Open-Source Leg project in the context of the state-of-the-art in prosthetic legs, promising research directions, and how to identify “not so good” research or development ideas.

Interview by Max Ortiz Catalan, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor on Bionics and Director of the Center for Bionics and Pain Research (Social media: FB, TW, IG, and LI).

Episode timestamps

(00:00) Coming up

(01:23) Introduction

(02:51) Introducing A. Prof. Elliott Rouse

(04:32) Introducing A. Prof. Levi Hargrove

(06:10) Why the open-source leg (OSL)?

(10:30) The OSL: The Design and Development

(14:40) The OSL: The Purpose

(17:03) Translation to Industry

(20:40) Human testing

(24:05) Neural Integration

(27:48) Multiple degrees of freedom?

(30:13) The Limiter: Hardware or Control?

(36:55) Safety and Therapy as a Consideration

(38:04) Sensory feedback

(39:05) Setting research priorities: Are we satisfying patient’s needs?

(39:52) Interesting research topics and directions

(41:50) Critically appraising previous research

(45:00) Identifying bad ideas.

(51:55) OSL website and further information.