
That little blue box is one of the world's smartest knees.
They won’t give you superhuman strength, and they definitely don’t cost six million dollars, but the artificial limbs from Ossur can think to help you walk better. The Rheo Knee, Power Knee, and Proprio Foot prosthetics all carry onboard artificial intelligences that help amputees use their bionic limbs with security and accuracy. Not only do the limbs move in a natural way and provide the strength to climb stairs foot over foot, they learn the user’s gait. Overtime, the bionic limbs will know how you walk better than you do. Check out a French demonstration video of the Power Knee after the break.
Based in Reykjavik, Iceland Ossur is a global leader in prosthetics, braces, and orthopedic education. The founder developed some of the first artificial limbs by testing them on his daughter. The new wave of bionic limbs may be drastically better than older models, but this isn’t enough for current CEO Jon Sigurdsson. His goal is to create limbs that are as good or better than the real thing. Certainly the knees and feet with artificial intelligence go a long way to helping amputees walk and run as well as their peers
Both the Rheo knee and Proprio foot (shown in image above) contain onboard computers that perform minute changes to the prosthetic to help it respond to variations in movement. The Proprio flexes to match terrain, and adjusts the ankle to fit different slopes. The Rheo adjusts actuators to control leg swing. Together, this provides the user with increased security. The embedded AIs can learn an amputees gait in just 15 steps, but continues to adjust as the user grows accustomed to the devices.










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