Class description
Topic: Exoskeleton Guidelines
OEM Grand Rounds April 9, 2025 Webinar
Presentation: Research to Practice in the Development of Exoskeleton Guidelines
Presenters:
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Carisa Harris-Adamson, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco
Session:
Construction workers have a higher incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the shoulder than most other industry sectors. Arm support exoskeletons (ASEs) have been proposed as one approach to augment a worker's capacity to meet the high physical demands of a task. This five-year project used a mixed methods approach to first determine the facilitators and barriers of ASE use among construction workers, then addressed those concerns in a variety of laboratory studies. The development of algorithms to predict fit and normalize the support level of ASEs based on a worker’s sex, height, and weight was developed and used for three laboratory studies. General findings from each study were summarized into application guidelines which were evaluated in the field. An overview of this project and its primary findings will be provided and an introduction to the next five-year field study will be presented.