- Contact person: Mathieu Falbriard
- People involved: Mathieu Falbriard
- Partners: International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC), CR Machinery SA, EPFL-LMAF, EPFL-LPAC, EPFL-EssentialTech program
- Funding source:
Overview
Today R&D effort in the prostheses industry is mainly driven by the demand in developed countries such as Europe and North America. The prevalent technology in prosthetic feet is based on carbon-reinforced composites that show advanced features like spring effect and biomechanical functions that improve the user’s speed of walk and comfort. As these composite materials are very expensive and because products have not been designed to be adapted to the social and environmental conditions of these specific contexts, people in low-income countries cannot benefit from up-to-date prosthetic technologies.
Agilis project
The goal of this project is to develop an innovative prosthetic foot for people living in developing countries where most often, premium-priced prosthetic products can’t be afford. The objective assessement of our new prosthetic foot performance will be carried out through a sequence of well defined, in-laboratory measurements. The first set of measurements will solely aim to characterize the biomechanical properties of a chosen set of foot prosthetics. The same measurement protocol will be performed three times throughout the project to evaluate the quality of our foot prosthetic at different stages of the design process. Once the final design available, a set of measurements will be carried with amputees to evaluate the function of our prosthetic foot.