Abstract
Worldwide, a significant interest in wearable robots or exoskeletons does exist, also from an industrial background. This paper provides an overview of assistive exoskeletons that have specifically been developed for industrial purposes. It discusses their potential in increasing performance and flexibility on one hand and in reducing the mechanical loads on workers involved in manual work on the other. From this it is concluded that exoskeletons have the potential to increase performance under specific conditions and to reduce physical loads significantly. However, several technical issues hinder mainstay practical use of exoskeletons in industry until now. One main issue concerns the human-machine interaction which stands in the way of acceptance. This issue and its linkage to ethics and standardization will be discussed during the conference.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the European shared cost project Robo-Mate, funded under the Seventh Framework Program [grant number FP7-2013-NMP-ICT-FOF].
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de Looze, M.P., Krause, F., O’Sullivan, L.W. (2017). The Potential and Acceptance of Exoskeletons in Industry. In: González-Vargas, J., Ibáñez, J., Contreras-Vidal, J., van der Kooij, H., Pons, J. (eds) Wearable Robotics: Challenges and Trends. Biosystems & Biorobotics, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46532-6_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46532-6_32
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