Design and Evaluation of a Passive Shoulder-support Exoskeleton for Overhead Work

Overhead work, commonly encountered in industrial scenarios, is recognized as a main contributor to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Shoulder-support exoskeletons have the potential to provide assistance to workers and are usually passive for low cost and good wearability. However, current passive shoulder-support exoskeletons lack sufficient range of motion and assistive performance. Here, we developed a passive shoulder-support exoskeleton to assist the shoulder of workers during overhead work, containing the ergonomic shoulder structure and passive assistive mechanism. The former guarantees a sufficient range of motion in both sagittal and horizontal flexion/extension motion, and the latter leads to effective assistance. The performance of the proposed exoskeleton was evaluated through experiments of ten healthy individuals on the aspect of biological efforts. The results showed that the root mean square of the measured muscles was decreased (up to 49.6%), which indicates the proposed exoskeleton could reduce the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. The proposed exoskeleton expects to compensate for shoulder gravity for workers, hence strengthening their physical health and enhancing work efficiency.