SBIR Phase II: Trunk-Supporting Exoskeleton System for Workers

这个项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是改善工作中弯腰弯腰的工人的生活。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。在造船和建筑工地上，有许多工人从事现有技术无法帮助完成的任务。机器人和自动化领域近期还没有自动化这些任务的解决方案。因此，工人是这些行业不可或缺的一部分。这里提出的技术会让工人们？环境更加宜人，防止他们残疾，并保持他们的生活质量。由于背部受伤每年仅在美国就花费了200亿美元的直接和间接成本，拟议中的技术不仅将使工人受益，也将使雇主受益。解决每年在全球耗资数十亿美元的痛点，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技术？S对工人的影响？背。这将为其他机构提供机会，研究人类背部疼痛或背部受伤的根本原因。这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)二期项目将通过开发躯干支撑外骨骼(TSE)来减少因弯腰和弯曲导致的工人背部损伤，从而改善工人的生活并减轻公司的财务负担。背部受伤是大量工作场所受伤的原因。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来开发技术，并对技术进行试验性评估。这些任务包括分析、设计和评估以减少外骨骼与使用者之间的分离，实验和设计以减轻工人在长时间低角度弯腰时的压力，以及确定弯腰行走的要求。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，为了评估该技术以验证上述特征，将进行实验，以量化该技术在类似于工人将遇到的活动中的性能。预计这项技术会减少参与者吗？在不降低他们的表现的情况下，对他们的下背部进行拉伤。

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.