SBIR Phase II: Trunk-Supporting Exoskeleton System for Workers

这个项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是改善那些在工作时弯腰驼背的工人的生活。这些活动导致背部受伤，占工作场所伤害的36%。该项目将产生一种辅助技术，以减少这些工人的伤害。在造船和建筑工地，有许多工人从事现有技术无法辅助的工作。机器人和自动化领域在近期内还没有解决方案来自动化这些任务。因此，工人是这些行业的重要组成部分。这里提出的技术将使工人？环境更加宜人，防止他们残疾，保持他们的生活质量。仅美国每年因背部受伤造成的直接和间接损失就高达200亿美元，因此这项技术不仅会让员工受益，也会让雇主受益。解决全球每年花费数十亿美元的痛点使该项目具有强大的商业潜力。在这个项目中进行的评估将揭示该技术。对工人的影响？回来。这将为其他机构研究人类背部疼痛或背部损伤的基本原理创造机会。这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目将通过开发主干支撑外骨骼（TSE）来改善工人的生活，减轻公司的经济负担，以减少工人因弯腰和弯曲造成的背部伤害。背部伤害在工作场所伤害中占很大比例。该项目的目标是根据用户和客户的建议、现场评估过程中遇到的问题开发技术，并对技术进行实验评估。任务包括分析、设计和评估，以减少外骨骼与用户之间的分离，实验和设计，以减轻工人在长时间低角度弯腰时的压力，并确定弯曲时行走的要求。预计这些功能将使该技术对用户和客户更具吸引力和可用性。此外，为了评估技术以验证上述特征，将执行与工人将遇到的活动相似的实验，以量化技术的性能。预计该技术将减少参与者？他们的下背部紧张，但不会降低他们的表现。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to improve the lives of workers who bend and stoop while performing their jobs. These activities lead to back injuries which account of 36% of work place injuries. This project will result in an assistive technology to reduce injuries in these workers. There are many workers in shipbuilding and construction sites who perform tasks which cannot be assisted by available technology. Robotics and automation fields do not have solutions in the near horizon to automate these tasks. Therefore, workers are an essential part of these industries. The technology proposed here will make the workers? environment much more pleasant, prevent them from getting disabled and maintain their quality of life. As back injuries cost the US alone 20 billion dollars annually in direct and indirect costs, the technology proposed will not only benefit workers but also employers. Addressing a pain point that costs billions of dollars globally each year gives this project strong commercial potential. The evaluations performed during this project will reveal the technology?s effect on workers? back. This will create an opportunity for other institutions to investigate fundamentals of human back pain or back injuries. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 project will improve the lives of workers and reduce financial burden on companies by developing a Trunk Support Exoskeleton (TSE) to reduce back injuries in workers caused by stooping and bending. Back injuries account for a large number of work place injuries. The goal of this project is to develop technologies based on user and customer recommendations, issues encountered during field evaluation, and experimentally evaluate the technology. The tasks include analysis, design and evaluation to reduce separation between the exoskeleton and the user, experiments and design to ease workers during prolonged low angle stooping and determining the requirements for walking while bending. It is expected that these features will make the technology more attractive and useable to users and customers. In addition, to evaluating the technology to validate the features above, experiments to quantify the performance of the technology during activities similar to those that workers would encounter will be performed. It is expected that the technology will reduce the participants? strain on their lower back without reducing their performance.