Integration and Task Assessment of the User Command Interface to the Occupational Exoskeleton Shoulder-sideWINDER

Workers are highly impacted by work-related musculoskeletal disorders in several industry positions. To mitigate this risk of injury, a potential solution is adopting active occupational exoskeletons in the workplace. Because these wearable devices are task-dependent, the user may need access to some domains to configure the exoskeleton parameters. The User Command Interface is a wearable human-machine interface, it is used as an adaptable setup system for occupational exoskeletons. It grants secure user identification, user capture information, and exoskeleton asset configuration such as controller gain and torque limits. The occupational exoskeleton Shoulder-sideWINDER is designed to modulate proper assistive forces for upper-limb users. This paper presents an evaluation of the human-machine interface integrated into the exoskeleton Shoulder-sideWINDER. The user can quickly make easy adjustments to adapt the assistive forces according to the task it is performing. A total of 16 participants conducted standard overhead lifting experiments for the Shoulder-sideWINDER exoskeleton. Results show that the User Command Interface assessment satisfies diverse usability attributes such as complexity, learnability, ease of use, intuitiveness, performance, reliability, and satisfaction.