Development of a Stand-alone Powered Exoskeleton Robot Suit in Steel Manufacturing

Yu, Ho; Choi, Il Seop; Han, Kyung-Lyong; Choi, Jae Yeon; Chung, Goobong; Suh, Jin-Ho

doi:10.2355/isijinternational.isijint-2015-272

Cited by 30 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…If exoskeletons achieved reductions in the mechanical stressors associated with MMH tasks, they would have the potential to reduce high rates of WMSDs seen in many industries. A number of studies have been published about the use of exoskeletons in reducing MSDs in steel manufacturing, construction, and automobile manufacturing and healthcare …”

Section: Potential Benefitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial exoskeletons: Need for intervention effectiveness research

Howard

Murashov

Lowe

et al. 2019

American J Industrial Med

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Exoskeleton devices are being introduced across several industry sectors to augment, amplify, or reinforce the performance of a worker's existing body components-primarily the lower back and the upper extremity. Industrial exoskeletons may play a role in reducing work-related musculoskeletal disorders arising from lifting and handling heavy materials or from supporting heavy tools in overhead work. However, wearing an exoskeleton may pose a number of risks that are currently not well-studied. There are only a few studies about the safety and health implications of wearable exoskeletons and most of those studies involve only a small number of participants. Before the widespread implementation of industrial exoskeletons occurs, there is need for prospective interventional studies to evaluate the safety and health effectiveness of exoskeletons across various industry sectors. Developing a research strategy to fill current safety and health knowledge gaps, understanding the benefits, risks, and barriers to adoption of industrial exoskeletons, determining whether exoskeleton can be considered a type of personal protective equipment, and advancing consensus standards that address exoskeleton safety, should be major interests of both the occupational safety and health research and practice communities. K E Y W O R D S exoskeleton, human augmentation, intervention effectiveness, PPE

show abstract

Section: Potential Benefitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industrial exoskeletons: Need for intervention effectiveness research

Howard

Murashov

Lowe

et al. 2019

American J Industrial Med

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Active exoskeletons seem to be more promising in assisting workers and reducing the risk of lumbar vertebral injuries due to the higher versatility of the control system and external power source. Over the last decade, several active exoskeletons have been developed for lifting assistance worldwide (Naruse et al, 2005 ; Kobayashi and Nozaki, 2007 ; Tanaka et al, 2008 ; Aida et al, 2009 ; Kadota et al, 2009 ; Kobayashi et al, 2009 ; Muramatsu et al, 2011 ; Li, 2013 ; Yu et al, 2015 ) and were demonstrated to reduce the musculature effort of the back extensor muscles (Li, 2013 ; Muramatsu et al, 2013 ). However, in many cases the control systems do not independently detect the user's intention, and therefore are unable to automatically trigger the delivery of the assistance at the right moment: power assistance is usually manually triggered by users with extra joysticks or control buttons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Real-Time Lift Detection Strategy for a Hip Exoskeleton

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Repetitive lifting of heavy loads increases the risk of back pain and even lumbar vertebral injuries to workers. Active exoskeletons can help workers lift loads by providing power assistance, and therefore reduce the moment and force applied on L5/S1 joint of human body when performing lifting tasks. However, most existing active exoskeletons for lifting assistance are unable to automatically detect user's lift movement, which limits the wide application of active exoskeletons in factories. In this paper, we propose a simple but effective lift detection strategy for exoskeleton control. This strategy uses only exoskeleton integrated sensors, without any extra sensors to capture human motion intentions. This makes the lift detection system more practical for applications in manufacturing environments. Seven healthy subjects participated in this research. Three different sessions were carried out, two for training and one for testing the algorithm. In the two training sessions, subjects were asked to wear a hip exoskeleton, controlled in transparent mode, and perform repetitive lifting and a locomotion circuit; lifting was executed with different techniques. The collected data were used to train the lift detection model. In the testing session, the exoskeleton was controlled in order to deliver torque to assist the lifting action, based on the lift detection made by the trained algorithm. The across-subject average accuracy of lift detection during online test was 97.97 ± 1.39% with subject-dependent model. Offline, the algorithm was trained with data acquired from all subjects to verify its performance for subject-independent detection, and an accuracy of 97.48 ± 1.53% was achieved. In addition, timeliness of the algorithm was quantitatively evaluated and the time delay was <160 ms across different lifting speeds. Surface electromyography was also measured to assess the efficacy of the exoskeleton in assisting subjects in performing load lifting tasks. These results validate the promise of applying the proposed lift detection strategy for exoskeleton control aiming at lift assistance.

show abstract

“…Despite the fact that today exoskeletons are introduced in different occupational fields—such as the industrial sector [ 3 , 5 ], construction [ 19 , 20 , 21 ], automotive industry [ 22 ], logistics [ 23 ], and steel manufacturing [ 24 ]—with the promise of improving the quality of work by combining human intelligence with exoskeleton assistance, their use in workplaces still needs to be investigated carefully. Considerations on the suitability of exoskeletons, their costs, and their impacts on the occupational safety and health of workers are required [ 25 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Upper-Body Exoskeletons on Human Metabolic Cost and Thermal Response during Work Tasks—A Systematic Review

Ferraro

Falcone

Ranavolo

et al. 2020

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: New wearable assistive devices (exoskeletons) have been developed for assisting people during work activity or rehabilitation. Although exoskeletons have been introduced into different occupational fields in an attempt to reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, the effectiveness of their use in workplaces still needs to be investigated. This systematic review focused on the effects of upper-body exoskeletons (UBEs) on human metabolic cost and thermophysiological response during upper-body work tasks. Methods: articles published until 22 September 2020 were selected from Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed for eligibility and the potential risk of bias was assessed. Results: Nine articles resulted in being eligible for the metabolic aspects, and none for the thermal analysis. All the studies were based on comparisons between conditions with and without exoskeletons and considered a total of 94 participants (mainly males) performing tasks involving the trunk or overhead work, 7 back-support exoskeletons, and 1 upper-limb support exoskeleton. Eight studies found a significant reduction in the mean values of the metabolic or cardiorespiratory parameters considered and one found no differences. Conclusions: The reduction found represents a preliminary finding that needs to be confirmed in a wider range of conditions, especially in workplaces, where work tasks show different characteristics and durations compared to those simulated in the laboratory. Future developments should investigate the dependence of metabolic cost on specific UBE design approaches during tasks involving the trunk and the possible statistical correlation between the metabolic cost and the surface ElectroMyoGraphy (sEMG) parameters. Finally, it could be interesting to investigate the effect of exoskeletons on the human thermophysiological response.

show abstract

Development of a Stand-alone Powered Exoskeleton Robot Suit in Steel Manufacturing

Cited by 30 publications

References 2 publications

Industrial exoskeletons: Need for intervention effectiveness research

Industrial exoskeletons: Need for intervention effectiveness research

A Real-Time Lift Detection Strategy for a Hip Exoskeleton

The Effects of Upper-Body Exoskeletons on Human Metabolic Cost and Thermal Response during Work Tasks—A Systematic Review

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About