Exploratory pilot study investigating effects of exoskeletons on movement patterns

The ergonomic configuration of processes is becoming increasingly important, especially considering the changing demographics and increasing shortage of skilled workers. Exoskeletons are widely discussed as a means of protecting employees from overstraining at the level of personal protective measures. The field of industrial exoskeletons research is still relatively new and has many unanswered questions. For example, there have not yet been sufficient studies on the influence of exoskeletons on the movements of employees. This publication discusses the effects of exoskeletons in manual processes. For this purpose, exemplary physical activities are carried out in a pilot study by a subject collective, whereby the tasks are executed with and without an exoskeleton. During the execution, a motion capturing system is used to record the movement data. Different back-supporting exoskeletons are taken into account in the study. The evaluation is based on the joint angles of the participants while performing tasks with and without exoskeletons. It is shown that the use of exoskeletons has a significant effect on the movement patterns, with a distinction made between rigid and soft support structures.