Pros & Cons Of Exoskeleton Technology

The advantages of exoskeleton technology can help sustain high-quality performance, protect the user, and improve work conditions. Companies, like Ford Motor Companies, are already using upper-body vests to assist their manufacturing employees with overhead strength and tool handling capabilities (Gonzalez, 2017). For the manufacturing industry, the use of exoskeletons is resulting in increased alertness, productivity, and work quality. These capabilities can provide companies with the ability to reduce work-related injuries, save money in medical expenses and sick leave, lower work fatigue, and provide the ability to retain experienced personnel past their physical prime (Gonzalez, 2017). While the manufacturing industry is embracing this new technology, other industries are slow to fund research and are still testing through field and lab experiments.

Another advantage of wearing an exoskeleton body suit is providing the end-user with support during heavy lifting. This advantage would be beneficial in the construction industry. With the current labor shortage in construction nationwide, exoskeleton body suits could extend the capabilities of one person on a jobsite. Practical uses for this unique technology include tool-holding exoskeletons, chair-less chairs, back support, powered gloves, full-body powered suits, and additional/supernumerary robotics (Gonzalez, 2017). All of these uses can correlate to a job within construction. There are other commercial possibilities for exoskeletons such as: rescue and emergency personnel could use them in rugged terrain that no wheeled vehicle could negotiate; firefighters could carry heavy gear into burning buildings and injured people out of them; and furniture movers, construction workers, and warehouse attendants could lift and carry heavier objects safely (Guizzo & Goldstein, 2005).

The benefits of exoskeleton technology can be achieved by the company and the employee-end-user. The company benefits from reduced work-related injuries, which in turn will save the company money on insurance and premiums. Companies will be able to increase productivity and meet scheduled work on-time or ahead-of-schedule. While the employee end user benefits are similar: less injuries on the job, less work fatigue, production rates increased, and more alert during work hours. Employees will be eager and less worried to perform their work duties while wearing an exoskeleton body suit.

One of the glaringly obvious weakness of this technology is the fact that not every human is the same size or shape. The main companies that are developing this technology and building these machines have expressed this issue as their number one concern. These companies are mostly developing this technology for the elderly and disabled, so this may not apply to the construction and labor fields per se. However, if the advancement of this technology is hindered on the ability to outfit every person then we may not see this technology in the construction industry.

The disadvantages of exoskeleton body suits compared to other technologies are:

1. designing a practical robotic suit that can accentuate the natural movement of the body.
2. giving the wearer control over this movement.

The ideal direct way to connect the link between human and suit is neural or muscular. The only exoskeletons on the market today to incorporate this type of technology are HAL and Myomo, which both use surface EMG electrodes (Young & Ferris, 2017).

However, some of the disadvantages of EMG electrodes is the lack of stability overtime, placement, muscle fatigue, and sweat. The signals can change overtime rendering the machine inoperable. The shortcomings of this technology are the speed of technology development and the availability of scientific publications in the field (Young & Ferris, 2017). As stated by A. Young and D. Ferris, in State of the Art and Future Directions for Lower Limb Robotic Exoskeletons, “We need industry to work with academia.” A lot of the research and field experiments are being conducted by large corporations or government agencies such as, Department of Defense (DoD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

As a result, a lot of the findings and research is not published nor shared with other companies or academic researchers that could provide a break-through in this technology. Furthermore, a lot of these programs hire engineers to work on the body-suits when a kinesiologist would be better suited to determine human movement. Kinesiologists know how the human body works in a way similar to how engineers know how machines work (Young & Ferris, 2017). Having a better understanding how humans move with robotic assistance is critical to creating better machines for the future of this technology.

The projects that have benefitted the most with exoskeleton technology is in the medical, military, and manufacturing fields. There are many companies that are trying to solve the problem of the growing elderly population in China (Chen, Wu, Liu, Feng, & Wang, 2017). There are many people in need of full-time medical care due to age or disability and with the use of exoskeleton technology these patients could be able to walk again or move around more readily. Another area of benefit is the manufacturing world. While our government agencies want to create a super human suit for military use, the manufacturing fields have advanced to practical use and capabilities of exoskeleton technology. As mentioned before, Ford Motor Companies currently uses an upper body vest to assist assembly line employees with overhead repetitive work (Gonzalez, 2017).

Exoskeleton technology has been in development for a number of years for the manufacturing and warehousing industries. The construction industry is mentioned as being a potential breakthrough in many research and journal articles; however, it is not currently benefitting from this technology. The project participants benefitting the most from exoskeleton are the members in the manufacturing and warehouse fields. Upper-body exoskeleton vests are offered to assembly line workers in the automobile industry as a means to reduce strain of repetitive factory work (Gonzalez, 2017). In the medical related fields, the use of exoskeletons is mainly to allow people with spinal cord injuries walk again or the elderly have a low level of mobility (Gibson, 2017).

So, while some patients may be benefitting from this technology, it does not have the mainstream applications for the purposes of this paper. The military applications are to reduce the physical toll on the human body during war fighting efforts (Gibson, 2017). While there are engineering related journal articles related to the military’s efforts for an “Iron Man” suit, there are not a lot of research articles on what the military is doing exactly with this technology.

References:

1. Chen, C., Wu, X., Liu, D.-x., Feng, W., & Wang, C. (2017). Design and Voluntary Motion Intention Estimation of a Novel Wearable Full-Body Flexible Exoskeleton Robot. Mobile Information Systems.
2. Dashevsky, E. (2011, May 03). How Close Are We to Iron Man Suits? Retrieved from ExtremeTech.com: etrieved from Nexis Uni.
3. Gibson, T. (2017, July). Power Suit. Mechanical Engineering, pp. 38-41.Gonzalez, C. (2017). Manufacturing workers become more than human with exoskeletons. Machine Design.
4. Guizzo, E., & Goldstein, H. (2005, October). The rise of the body bots. Spectrum IEEE, 42(10), pp. 50-56.
5. Young, A. J., & Ferris, D. P. (2017, February). State of the Art and Future Directions for Lower Limb Robotic Exoskeletons. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 25(2), pp. 171-182.