Creo Customer: Designing Replacements for Human Limbs

By LINDSEY CHRISTENSEN | Published: MAR 7, 2012

In a previous episode of the Product Design Show, Vince and Allison introduced us to College Park, a company that designs prosthetic feet. It took a couple years and about ten talented engineers in Fraser, Michigan to create the first-of-its-kind iPecs Lab.

The iPecs Lab provides design engineers with the empirical data they need to make an artificial limb feel like a true extension of an amputee’s body.

Before the iPecs Lab, College Park engineers used to rely upon the communication of the wearer and the prosthetist to make changes to the foot. But with the wireless iPecs Lab device, the body actually provides the feedback, such as where the forces may be too extreme for the wearer. The device’s load cell is about the size of a cell phone and is placed between the wearer’s socket and the prosthetic. From the information gathered from the device, the engineer makes design adjustments to the foot.

Newer prosthetic foot designs, like the Soleus, rely upon the iPecs Lab technology. The Soleus is designed for medium to high impact use and creates a seamless gait for the wearer. It accomplishes this through a series of springs that start from the back of the foot and end up at the front, a technology called their Integrated Spring Technology (iST). For instance, when a person walks, starting with the heel strike, the back two springs of the prosthesis start to load up. As the foot continues through its gait, it transfers weight from the back spring, to the middle spring, to the front spring. Vince and Allison show a slow-motion view of these intricacies in this episode of the Product Design Show below.

Director of engineering, Mike Leydet, says that he is humbled by what it takes to design a prosthetic foot. “The complexity of the motion of the human body walking through space is incredible. That’s why we needed devices and sensors [like the iPecs Lab] to measure these things.”

The creative genius behind the iPecs Lab, Integrated Spring Technology, and the Soleus foot is homegrown from College Park Industries in Michigan. The technology to bring brilliance into 3D space is from Creo Parametric.