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Expansion of Industry section in article Powered exoskeleton

Industry

Over the last decades, the exoskeleton technology has been widespread in the industrial and manufacturing framework. Workers are heavily exposed to physical workload due to lifting tasks, repetitive movements, and non-ergonomic postures . In addition, the aging of the workforce population is rapidly increasing and older workers are the most sensitive to work-related musculoskeletal diseases (WMSD). Wearable robotics has the potential to lower the physical effort of workers and to decrease the occurrence of WMSD, thus reducing the healthcare costs for companies..These systems can be categorized into two categories :

• exoskeletons for upper-limb for assisting shoulder flexion-extension movements;
• exoskeletons for lumbar support for assisting manual lifting tasks.

To effectively introduce exoskeletons in the industrial scenario, they are required to fulfill several technical specifications such as being lightweight, comfortable, safe, and minimally invasive to the environment. To reduce mass and obtrusiveness, most companies started developing single-joint exoskeletons (i.e. intended to assist only the limb involved in specific tasks) rather than full body powered suits . In addition, a demanding requirement -to enhance the effectiveness of such devices -is to reduce the effort of assisted muscles by minimizing the biomechanical strain on other body parts that can cause pain and discomfort to the end-users. A big challenge for the real adoption of these systems in the industrial setting is ensuring the worker’s acceptance, i.e. the worker should feel better, mentally and physically, when working with the exoskeleton.