Abstract
Overheadwork is classifiedas one of the major risk factors for the onset of shoulder work-related musculoskeletal disorders and muscle fatigue. Upper-limb exoskeletons can be used to assist workers during the execution of industrial overhead tasks to prevent such disorders. Twelve novice participants have been equipped with inertial and force/torque sensors to simultaneously estimate the whole-body kinematics and the joint torques (i.e., internal articular stress) by means of a probabilistic estimator, while performing an overhead task with a pointing tool. An evaluation has been performed to analyze the effect at the whole-body level by considering the conditions of wearing and not-wearing PAEXO, a passive exoskeleton for upper-limb support during overhead work. Results point out that PAEXO provides a reduction of the whole-body joint effort across the experimental task blocks (from 66% to 86%). Moreover, the analysis along with five different body areas shows that 1) the exoskeleton provides support at the human shoulders by reducing the joint effort at the targeted limbs, and 2) that part of the internal wrenches is intuitively transferred from the upper body to the thighs and legs, which is shown with an increment of the torques at the legs joints. The promising outcomes show that the probabilistic estimation algorithm can be used as a validation metric to quantitatively assess PAEXO performances, paving thus the way for the next challenging milestone, such as the optimization of the human joint torques via adaptive exoskeleton control.
Highlights
E XOSKELETONS have been part of the robotics scenario for several decades
Whole-body joint torque estimation of NE and WE sessions have been compared to assess the effect of the exoskeleton at the inter-subject level
This article achievements show that the estimation algorithm can be used as a validation tool to assess if PAEXO is able to measure quantitatively the overhead workers effort
Summary
E XOSKELETONS have been part of the robotics scenario for several decades. The scientific interest in exoskeletonbased devices was born in the early ’60s to augment human performances for military purposes [1]. The last decade, revealed a rising demand for exoskeletons tailored for industrial applications [5], [6]. Assembly-line workers are highly exposed to the genesis of pathologies related to physical stress due to repetitive upper-body movements (e.g., in the automotive workplace, workers have to reach above their heads thousands of times a day when working on the underside of cars). The 2019 report of the European Union on the working conditions in a global perspective [7] showed that pathologies related to repetitive hand or arm movements are the most pervasive job-related risk by affecting more than 60% of the working population in Europe. Industrial exoskeletons have been recently developed to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) and to rehabilitate existing pathologies.
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