Kansas State University

The Prosthetic Design team is currently working one main project and a couple of side projects at the moment.

The main project is a self-adjusting prosthetic leg socket. The need for this arises because amputees lose volume in their residual limb throughout the day. This fluctuation is due to the uptake and loss of water through food and sweating. Amputees typically have to add socks onto their limb as it shrinks to ensure a snug fit between the limb and socket. If this isn’t a good fit, sores can develop on the end of the limb that require the user to not use their prosthetic leg while it heals.

Their solution is to use pressure sensors and a feedback loop to automatically adjust the prosthetic socket throughout the day, and to also allow the user to adjust the settings through an app on their phone. When being fit with the socket by their prosthetist, the allowable pressure range would be set.

In addition to this, they are working on a couple of side project:

• working on reverse-engineering a prosthetic knee
• Planning on getting involved in e-NABLE, an open-source community that 3D prints prosthetic hands for those in need
• Attempting to create a gait system to model the movement of an able-bodied person and compare that to someone with a prosthetic leg.