Impact of a Lower Limb Exosuit Anchor Points on Energetics and Biomechanics.

Anchor point placement is a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of exosuit design since it determines how forces interact with the human body. This work analyzes the impact of different anchor point positions on gait kinematics, muscular activation and energetic consumption. A total of six experiments were conducted with 11 subjects wearing the XoSoft exosuit, which assists hip flexion in five configurations.

Evaluating Muscle Fatigue With Non-Invasive Approaches: A Review of Methods, Metrics, and Implications.

An accurate and reliable assessment of muscle fatigue is crucial for understanding its underlying mechanisms, monitoring training adaptations, evaluating rehabilitation progress, and optimizing performance in sports and occupational settings. Over the years, numerous methods and metrics have been developed to quantify and characterize muscle fatigue. This paper comprehensively reviews the various assessment techniques used to measure muscle fatigue, encompassing physiological and functional perspectives based on questionnaires, biosignals, and robotics interfaces.

Evaluating the EVA surgical navigation system for ureteral identification in an in vivo porcine model.

Surgical safety has emerged as a significant public health concern. Ureteral injury (UI) is one of the most common forms of iatrogenic urological issues, lacking non-invasive prevention strategies. In this context, computer-assisted technologies offer a promising solution for enhancing intra-operative safety.

Human activity recognition algorithms for manual material handling activities.

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using wearable sensors has prompted substantial interest in recent years due to the availability and low cost of Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). HAR using IMUs can aid both the ergonomic evaluation of the performed activities and, more recently, with the development of exoskeleton technologies, can assist with the selection of precisely tailored assisting strategies. However, there needs to be more research regarding the identification of diverse lifting styles, which requires appropriate datasets and the proper selection of hyperparameters for the employed classification algorithms.

From the idea to the user: a pragmatic multifaceted approach to testing occupational exoskeletons.

Assessment of occupational exoskeletons should ideally include longitudinal and multistage studies in real working scenarios to prove their effectiveness and sustainability in real in-field contexts and to help generalize the findings for specific scenarios. This work presents a comprehensive assessment methodology implemented as a multistage experimental campaign for rail industry workers using a back-support exoskeleton (StreamEXO). This work demonstrates that a sector/task-specific exoskeleton developed to address work task-specific requirements generates beneficial performance and user experience results.

Multi-Exoskeleton Performance Evaluation: Integrated Muscle Energy Indices to Determine the Quality and Quantity of Assistance.

The assessment of realistic work tasks is a critical aspect of introducing exoskeletons to work environments. However, as the experimental task's complexity increases, the analysis of muscle activity becomes increasingly challenging. Thus, it is essential to use metrics that adequately represent the physical human-exoskeleton interaction (pHEI).

Field assessment of active BSE: Trends over test days of subjective indicators and self-reported fatigue for railway construction workers.

The research community has conducted several controlled "in -lab" assessments on the effectiveness of industrial exoskeletons, paving the way for their adoption. However, field testing, focusing on ergonomics and the user experience, could serve to enhance both end-users' awareness and address open doubts concerning true effectiveness of industrial exoskeletons. This study presents an analysis of qualitative data regarding the use of back-support exoskeletons during field trials in harsh civil engineering environments.

Dynamic and Static Assistive Strategies for a Tailored Occupational Back-Support Exoskeleton: Assessment on Real Tasks Carried Out by Railway Workers.

This study on occupational back-support exoskeletons performs a laboratory evaluation of realistic tasks with expert workers from the railway sector. Workers performed both a static task and a dynamic task, each involving manual material handling (MMH) and manipulating loads of 20 kg, in three conditions: without an exoskeleton, with a commercially available passive exoskeleton (Laevo v2.56), and with the StreamEXO, an active back-support exoskeleton developed by our institute.

Online Ergonomic Evaluation in Realistic Manual Material Handling Task: Proof of Concept.

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are globally one of the leading causes of work-related injuries. They significantly impact worker health and business costs. Work task ergonomic risk indices have been developed that use observational assessments to identify potential injuries, and allow safety managers to promptly intervene to mitigate the risks.

Control of a Back-Support Exoskeleton to Assist Carrying Activities.

Back-support exoskeletons are commonly used in the workplace to reduce low back pain risk for workers performing demanding activities. However, for the assistance of tasks differing from lifting, back-support exoskeletons potential has not been exploited extensively. This work focuses on the use of an active back-support exoskeleton to assist carrying.

Lyapunov stability of cable-driven manipulators with synthetic fibre cables regulated by non-linear full-state feedback controller.

Robotic manipulators provide advantages in working environments regarding efficiency and safety, which is further increased in the case of elastic joint manipulators, whose mechanical compliance reduces the energy involved in collisions with workers. Cable-driven manipulators are elastic joint manipulators particularly suitable for industrial inspection thanks to the relocation of actuators outside hostile environments, increasing the manipulator payload-to-weight ratio. Recently, synthetic fibre cables are substituting steel cables due to their better-performing mechanical properties, but their visco-elastic behaviour must be compensated in the controller design.

Quasi-passive lower limbs exosuit: an in-depth assessment of fatigue, kinematic and muscular patterns while comparing assistive strategies on an expert subject's gait analysis.

Wearable robots are becoming a valuable solution that helps injured, and elderly people regain mobility and improve clinical outcomes by speeding up the rehabilitation process. The XoSoft exosuit identified several benefits, including improvement of assistance, usability, and acceptance with a soft, modular, bio-mimetic, and quasi-passive exoskeleton. This study compares two assistive configurations: (i) a bilateral hip flexion (HA, hips-assistance) and (ii) a bilateral hip flexion combined with ankle plantarflexion (HAA, hips-ankles-assistance) with the main goal of evaluating compensatory actions and synergetic effects generated by the human- exoskeleton interaction.

μRALP and Beyond: Micro-Technologies and Systems for Robot-Assisted Endoscopic Laser Microsurgery.

Laser microsurgery is the current gold standard surgical technique for the treatment of selected diseases in delicate organs such as the larynx. However, the operations require large surgical expertise and dexterity, and face significant limitations imposed by available technology, such as the requirement for direct line of sight to the surgical field, restricted access, and direct manual control of the surgical instruments. To change this status quo, the European project μRALP pioneered research towards a complete redesign of current laser microsurgery systems, focusing on the development of robotic micro-technologies to enable endoscopic operations.

Versatile and non-versatile occupational back-support exoskeletons: A comparison in laboratory and field studies.

Assistive strategies for occupational back-support exoskeletons have focused, mostly, on lifting tasks. However, in occupational scenarios, it is important to account not only for lifting but also for other activities. This can be done exploiting human activity recognition algorithms that can identify which task the user is performing and trigger the appropriate assistive strategy.

Geometry-aware manipulability learning, tracking, and transfer.

Body posture influences human and robot performance in manipulation tasks, as appropriate poses facilitate motion or the exertion of force along different axes. In robotics, manipulability ellipsoids arise as a powerful descriptor to analyze, control, and design the robot dexterity as a function of the articulatory joint configuration. This descriptor can be designed according to different task requirements, such as tracking a desired position or applying a specific force.

Equivalent Weight: Connecting Exoskeleton Effectiveness with Ergonomic Risk during Manual Material Handling.

Occupational exoskeletons are becoming a concrete solution to mitigate work-related musculoskeletal disorders associated with manual material handling activities. The rationale behind this study is to search for common ground for exoskeleton evaluators to engage in dialogue with corporate Health & Safety professionals while integrating exoskeletons with their workers. This study suggests an innovative interpretation of the effect of a lower-back assistive exoskeleton and related performances that are built on the benefit delivered through reduced activation of the erector spinae musculature.

Applicability of an Active Back-Support Exoskeleton to Carrying Activities.

Occupational back-support exoskeletons are becoming a more and more common solution to mitigate work-related lower-back pain associated with lifting activities. In addition to lifting, there are many other tasks performed by workers, such as carrying, pushing, and pulling, that might benefit from the use of an exoskeleton. In this work, the impact that carrying has on lower-back loading compared to lifting and the need to select different assistive strategies based on the performed task are presented.

Evaluation of an acceleration-based assistive strategy to control a back-support exoskeleton for manual material handling.

To reduce the incidence of occupational musculoskeletal disorders, back-support exoskeletons are being introduced to assist manual material handling activities. Using a device of this type, this study investigates the effects of a new control strategy that uses the angular acceleration of the user's trunk to assist during lifting tasks. To validate this new strategy, its effectiveness was experimentally evaluated relative to the condition without the exoskeleton as well as against existing strategies for comparison.

Exoskeleton kinematic design robustness: An assessment method to account for human variability.

Exoskeletons are wearable devices intended to physically assist one or multiple human joints in executing certain activities. From a mechanical point of view, they are kinematic structures arranged in parallel to the biological joints. In order to allow the users to move while assisted, it is crucial to avoid mobility restrictions introduced by the exoskeleton's kinematics.

Systematic framework for performance evaluation of exoskeleton actuators.

Wearable devices, such as exoskeletons, are becoming increasingly common and are being used mainly for improving motility and daily life autonomy, rehabilitation purposes, and as industrial aids. There are many variables that must be optimized to create an efficient, smoothly operating device. The selection of a suitable actuator is one of these variables, and the actuators are usually sized after studying the kinematic and dynamic characteristics of the target task, combining information from motion tracking, inverse dynamics, and force plates.

Actuation Selection for Assistive Exoskeletons: Matching Capabilities to Task Requirements.

Selecting actuators for assistive exoskeletons involves decisions in which designers usually face contrasting requirements. While certain choices may depend on the application context or design philosophy, it is generally desirable to avoid oversizing actuators in order to obtain more lightweight and transparent systems, ultimately promoting the adoption of a given device. In many cases, the torque and power requirements can be relaxed by exploiting the contribution of an elastic element acting in mechanical parallel.