TY - JOUR
T1 - Occupational exoskeletons
T2 - A roadmap toward large-scale adoption. Methodology and challenges of bringing exoskeletons to workplaces
AU - Crea, Simona
AU - Beckerle, Philipp
AU - De Looze, Michiel
AU - De Pauw, Kevin
AU - Grazi, Lorenzo
AU - Kermavnar, Tjaša
AU - Masood, Jawad
AU - O’Sullivan, Leonard W.
AU - Pacifico, Ilaria
AU - Rodriguez-Guerrero, Carlos
AU - Vitiello, Nicola
AU - Ristić-Durrant, Danijela
AU - Veneman, Jan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The large-scale adoption of occupational exoskeletons (OEs) will only happen if clear evidence of effectiveness of the devices is available. Performing product-specific field validation studies would allow the stakeholders and decision-makers (e.g., employers, ergonomists, health, and safety departments) to assess OEs’ effectiveness in their specific work contexts and with experienced workers, who could further provide useful insights on practical issues related to exoskeleton daily use. This paper reviews present-day scientific methods for assessing the effectiveness of OEs in laboratory and field studies, and presents the vision of the authors on a roadmap that could lead to large-scale adoption of this technology. The analysis of the state-of-the-art shows methodological differences between laboratory and field studies. While the former are more extensively reported in scientific papers, they exhibit limited generalizability of the findings to real-world scenarios. On the contrary, field studies are limited in sample sizes and frequently focused only on subjective metrics. We propose a roadmap to promote large-scale knowledge-based adoption of OEs. It details that the analysis of the costs and benefits of this technology should be communicated to all stakeholders to facilitate informed decision making, so that each stakeholder can develop their specific role regarding this innovation. Large-scale field studies can help identify and monitor the possible side-effects related to exoskeleton use in real work situations, as well as provide a comprehensive scientific knowledge base to support the revision of ergonomics risk-assessment methods, safety standards and regulations, and the definition of guidelines and practices for the selection and use of OEs.
AB - The large-scale adoption of occupational exoskeletons (OEs) will only happen if clear evidence of effectiveness of the devices is available. Performing product-specific field validation studies would allow the stakeholders and decision-makers (e.g., employers, ergonomists, health, and safety departments) to assess OEs’ effectiveness in their specific work contexts and with experienced workers, who could further provide useful insights on practical issues related to exoskeleton daily use. This paper reviews present-day scientific methods for assessing the effectiveness of OEs in laboratory and field studies, and presents the vision of the authors on a roadmap that could lead to large-scale adoption of this technology. The analysis of the state-of-the-art shows methodological differences between laboratory and field studies. While the former are more extensively reported in scientific papers, they exhibit limited generalizability of the findings to real-world scenarios. On the contrary, field studies are limited in sample sizes and frequently focused only on subjective metrics. We propose a roadmap to promote large-scale knowledge-based adoption of OEs. It details that the analysis of the costs and benefits of this technology should be communicated to all stakeholders to facilitate informed decision making, so that each stakeholder can develop their specific role regarding this innovation. Large-scale field studies can help identify and monitor the possible side-effects related to exoskeleton use in real work situations, as well as provide a comprehensive scientific knowledge base to support the revision of ergonomics risk-assessment methods, safety standards and regulations, and the definition of guidelines and practices for the selection and use of OEs.
KW - field studies
KW - industrial ergonomics
KW - occupational exoskeletons
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85158886692&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/wtc.2021.11
DO - 10.1017/wtc.2021.11
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85158886692
SN - 2631-7176
VL - 2
SP - e11
JO - Wearable Technologies
JF - Wearable Technologies
M1 - e11
ER -