While a wearable technology that assists the lower back muscles has great potential to cut down on workplace injuries, it needs to be further investigated, says new Brock-led research.
Associate Professor of Kinesiology Shawn Beaudette (right) and fourth-year Kinesiology student Emma Ratke (left) record the muscle activity and body movement of fourth-year Kinesiology student Ian Doctor as he lifts a box while wearing an exoskeleton to support his back.
"Wearable exoskeletons are coming on the market right now and a lot of people are wanting to integrate them in their work," says fourth-year Kinesiology student Emma Ratke. "But there should be more research to make sure they are safe, and useful, especially if you implement them on a large scale."
To address gaps in previous research, Ratke designed a study to evaluate a lower back exoskeleton doing tasks that replicated how workers move while lifting objects.
The study, "Ability of a passive back support exoskeleton to mitigate fatigue related adaptations in a complex repetitive lifting task" is set to be published next month in The Journal of Biomechanics.
The research was funded by the Canadian Standards Association Undergraduate Research Scholarship and two grants the Undergraduate Student Research Award and Discovery Grant from the Government of Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Research participants performed two one-hour sessions of lifting, transferring and lowering boxes during a simulated warehouse pallet stacking task. The participants did not wear the exoskeleton during the first session but did wear it in the second session.
During the two sessions, conducted around eight months apart, participants were instructed to be as productive as possible.
Unlike earlier studies in which movements were restricted to bending forwards, tasks involved twisting, bending and stretching all sides of the body, "similar to something seen in an Amazon warehouse or an assembly line," says Ratke.
Sensors placed on various parts of the body collected and transmitted information on muscle activity and body movement. The research team compared the two sets of data to see the exoskeleton's impacts on muscle fatigue, exertion and co-ordination all over the body but particularly in the lower back.
"The participants perceived less exertion and they completed tasks faster with the exoskeleton on," says Ratke. "We found that they moved more boxes when they wore the exoskeleton, representing an increase in productivity by roughly six per cent."
She says participants when wearing the exoskeleton had different movement patterns, however more research is needed to understand how this may be related to injury risk.
Associate Professor of Kinesiology Shawn Beaudette says he is encouraged by the results of the study, which adds to the growing body of literature supporting the use of back supporting exoskeletons during physically demanding tasks.
"The demographic we're targeting assembly line workers, people on the shop floor have lower back pain and dysfunction coming from cumulative use and overload," says Beaudette, who led the six-member research team.
"We're hoping to validate an assistive technology to help offset that damage," he says, adding that "musculoskeletal disorders are one of the most impactful burdens we as Canadians face in our day-to-day lives."
But it may be too early to endorse the use of back-support exoskeletons across the board, he says.
"Although the results of this work are promising, it is hard to assume a one-size-fits-all approach," says Beaudette. "Additional work is needed to assess the potential benefits of back-support exoskeletons across a wide range of tasks, and workers to support widespread adoption."
In addition to Beaudette and Ratke, the research team included Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Canada Research Chair in Neuromuscular Mechanics and Ergonomics Michael Holmes, then-undergraduate Queen's University student Hannah McMaster, PhD in Applied Health Sciences student Chris Vellucci and University of Waterloo postdoctoral fellow Dennis Larson.
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