Abstract
The technology of passive upper-limb exoskeletons has been developed and improved to reduce the possibility of work-related injury or musculoskeletal discord. At present, each type of exoskeleton wearing guideline has different basis. There is no adjustment guideline for different working heights. This research aimed to explore the effect of working heights, working postures, and the setting of exoskeleton, on the assisting force. A passive upper limb exoskeleton, Comau MATE, was applied as the experimental equipment to explore the effect of above three factors. The results showed that the assisting forces of exoskeleton were significantly affected by working height, spring tension setting, and width between hands. The exoskeleton could provide better assisting force when users’ working area are between shoulder to head, and the effect may decrease when user put their hand overhead. When users’ two hands were shoulder width apart, the exoskeleton could provide better support. Those finding could provide a guide for the passive upper-limb exoskeleton users to adjust their setting of exoskeleton.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bosch, T., et al.: The effects of a passive exoskeleton on muscle activity, discomfort and endurance time in forward bending work. Appl. Ergon. 54, 212–217 (2016)
Gopura, R., et al.: Developments in hardware systems of active upper-limb exoskeleton robots: a review. Robot. Auton. Syst. 75, 203–220 (2016)
Maurice, P., et al.: Evaluation of PAEXO, a novel passive exoskeleton for overhead work. Comput. Methods Biomech. Biomed. Engin. 22(sup1), S448–S450 (2019)
Hyun, D.J., et al.: A light-weight passive upper arm assistive exoskeleton based on multi-linkage spring-energy dissipation mechanism for overhead tasks. Robot. Auton. Syst. 122, 103309 (2019)
Liu, S., et al.: Solving the surgeon ergonomic crisis with surgical exosuit. Surg. Endosc. 32(1), 236–244 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00464-017-5667-x
Perez Luque, E.: Evaluation of the Use of Exoskeletons in the Range of Motion of Workers (2019)
Alabdulkarim, S., Nussbaum, M.A.: Influences of different exoskeleton designs and tool mass on physical demands and performance in a simulated overhead drilling task. Appl. Ergon. 74, 55–66 (2019)
Kim, S., et al.: Assessing the influence of a passive, upper extremity exoskeletal vest for tasks requiring arm elevation: Part I–“Expected” effects on discomfort, shoulder muscle activity, and work task performance. Appl. Ergon. 70, 315–322 (2018)
Theurel, J., et al.: Physiological consequences of using an upper limb exoskeleton during manual handling tasks. Appl. Ergon. 67, 211–217 (2018)
Luque, E.P., et al.: Evaluation of the Use of Exoskeletons in the Range of Motion of Workers. PhD thesis, University of Skovde, Skovde (2019)
Grazi, L., et al.: Design and experimental evaluation of a semi-passive upper-limb exoskeleton for workers with motorized tuning of assistance. IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng. 28(10), 2276–2285 (2020)
Acknowledgement
This research was funded by the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan with project number of 109-2221-E-240-001-MY3 and 111-2813-C-240-005-E.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Liu, KH., Yi, SC., Lin, YC. (2023). How to Select the Force Setting of the Exoskeleton? The Effect of Working Height, Hand Posture on Assisting Force. In: Rau, PL.P. (eds) Cross-Cultural Design. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14023. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35939-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35939-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-35938-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-35939-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)