1. A control system for controlling a motorized prosthetic or orthotic device (POD) that is actuatable about a joint, the control system comprising: a first inertial measurement unit (IMU) associated with a first segment of a POD and configured to collect a first set of data for determining one or more measurements of at least one of a vertical displacement of the first segment, a horizontal displacement of the first segment, a torque associated with the first segment, and an absolute angle of the first segment with respect to gravity; a second IMU associated with a second segment of the POD and configured to collect a second set of data for determining one or more measurements of at least one of a vertical displacement of the second segment, a horizontal displacement of the second segment, a torque associated with the second segment, an absolute angle of the second segment with respect to gravity, and a net torque between the first segment and the second segment; and a control system architecture having an inference layer in communication with a reactive layer, wherein the inference and reactive layers are configured to each receive one or more first measurements and the one or more second measurements, and the reactive layer is further configured to control the POD based on one or more parameters of a motor controller, the inference layer comprising: one or more locomotion activity detectors each configured to detect in parallel with each other a distinct locomotion activity of the user based on at least the one or more first measurements and the one or more second measurements; an arbitration mechanism in communication with the one or more locomotion activity detectors and configured to evaluate outputs from the plurality of locomotion activity detectors to determine a current user activity; and a parameters manager in communication with the arbitration mechanism, a parameters database and the reactive layer, the parameters manager configured to retrieve a parameter set from the parameters database based on the determined current user activity, and to provide the parameter set to the reactive layer to modify at least one parameter of the one or more parameters of the motor controller, wherein the at least one modified parameter alters a behavior of the reactive layer.