A comparison between three commercially available exoskeletons in the automotive industry: an electromyographic pilot study

The Exo4Work shoulder exoskeleton effectively reduces muscle and joint loading during simulated occupational tasks above shoulder height

“…Therefore, the cumulative effects of the exoskeleton over a longer period such as a complete workday could potentially reduce the risk of developing WMSDs. These reductions in contact forces are in line with previously reported reductions in muscle activations in the shoulder when wearing a similar passive shoulder exoskeleton (Alabdulkarim and Nussbaum, 2019), (Pinho et al, 2020), (Pacifico et al, 2019), (Kim et al, 2018c). On the other hand, during the low and torso height lift when wearing the exoskeleton, joint moments and contact forces in the knee increased, and, even more importantly, shoulder joint contact forces were increased.…”

“…Many passive shoulder exoskeletons e.g. EksoVestTM (EksoBionics®, Richmond, CA, USA), the AirframeTM (Levitate Technologies®, San Diego, CA, USA), the ShoulderX (SuitX®, Emeryville, CA, USA), the PAEXO shoulder (Ottobock®, Duderstadt, Germany), and Skel'Ex (Skel'Ex®, Rotterdam, Holland) have been proven to reduce muscle activity in the shoulder area during quasi-static tasks above shoulder height (Maurice et al, 2020;Alabdulkarim and Nussbaum, 2019;Huysamen et al, 2018;Van Engelhoven et al, 2018;Pinho et al, 2020). Although these effects confirm the potential of these exoskeletons to reduce musculoskeletal loading, their effect during more dynamic tasks such as overhead lifting tasks representative for real-life working situations are often not evaluated.…”

EMG Characterization and Processing in Production Engineering

“…It has been also identified that the use of the proposed exoskeletons might affect the quality of the tasks. A similar study is carried out by Pinho et al [ 103 ] with the upper limb exoskeletons ShoulderX™ by SuitX (Emeryville, CA, USA), Mate™ by Comau (Grugiasco, Italy), and Paexo™ by Ottobock (Duderstadt, Germany). The aim of the investigation is to identify how a tool’s weight and position affect the shoulder muscular activity in simulated overhead industrial activities.…”

Industrial Upper-Limb Exoskeleton Characterization: Paving the Way to New Standards for Benchmarking

“…Exoskeleton technology is an emerging technology used in different fields, for example, for military purposes [11], in the medical field for rehabilitation or assistance [12][13][14], or for industrial applications [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Even though there is a growing trend in automation and mechanization of a variety of processes in the industry, human-robot collaboration has been targeted in order to keep human flexibility, allowing high levels of dexterity and fine handling, much needed in dynamic manufacturing, for example [9,21].…”

“…Although industrial exoskeletons have been extensively tested with subjects [18,19,22], there are no standardized procedures to test exoskeletons independently of the user that provide direct quantitative measurements. In this respect, it is difficult to assess different exoskeletons under the same conditions to obtain benchmarking metrics.…”