Fig. 1

Experimental setup. The prosthesis emulator is tethered to an off-board motor and controlled via a computer interfaced with MATLAB and Simulink. The desired stiffness can be entered into the software, which allows the ankle stiffness to be systematically varied during the dorsiflexion phase and push-off. The protocol tested five different prosthetic ankle stiffness (based on literature-values of human ankle stiffness) with and without a weighted vest (~ 30% of body mass). The participants wore a lift shoe on the contralateral leg