This NSF project investigated partnerships between passive exosuit/exoskeleton (collectively called EXO) technology, trade workers, and construction work to establish the exoskeleton-enabled future of work in construction workplaces. Its intellectual merits include three main aspects: in-field assessment of EXOs’ impact; expert consensus on facilitators and barriers of EXO use in construction; and a vision for using instrumented EXOs to overcome the barriers identified.

First, the project assessed the effectiveness of EXOs in construction fields by tracking worker postures, heart rates, etc. with wearable sensors to gain insights into the impact of passive back-support and arm-support EXOs on construction workers. We reconstructed their full-body postures and compared the joint motions, heart rates, and task completion time of the workers with and without the EXOs. The results showed that the workers with EXOs altered their movement in individual-specific ways. Overall, the objective measures from the wearable sensors were effective in showing the impact of EXOs. However, it is impractical to scale this scientific approach. The time required to put on a suite of wearable sensors and the expense of the sensors make the approach unable to be used to accumulate days and weeks of data to determine long-term EXO wearing impact.

Second, the project identified facilitators and barriers to the adoption of occupational EXOs in construction. We organized a workshop and Delphi panel attended by 18 experts from academia, industries (EXO manufacturers and construction companies), and government (NIOSH). We shared findings from the field-based studies, and the experts synthesized consensus opinions on the future of EXOs and EXO-assisted workers and work. They agreed that there was great potential in existing passive EXOs but still had concerns about the safe use of EXOs in practice. EXO use might put workers at risk of injuries when the assistance provided by the EXOs during use is unknown.

Third, the project proposed the idea of instrumenting EXO, to generate information on real EXO use and impact by monitoring the elastic bands, flex bars, and/or spring cartridges of EXOs to identify how they assist target body parts, and how they may load other parts. Following this idea, we conducted a pilot effort to instrument a passive back support EXO. Preliminary results showed that such instrumentation could successfully measure displacement of the string finely enough to capture the expected stretch of the EXO’s supporting elastic straps, which provides a viable means for self-monitoring and long-term testing of EXOs’ impacts during real usage in construction tasks.  

The broader impact of this project came from advancing the understanding of how the EXO technology and workforce synergize in construction fields and deepening the communications and collaborations among different stakeholders. It created a unique opportunity for EXO manufacturers, construction companies, labor unions, etc. to provide their feedback, advance their knowledge of the state of the art, and contribute to the development of the emerging EXO-worker partnerships in construction practice. The involvement of NIOSH allowed that standards-setting agency to understand the findings, increasing the potential that the research will impact safety regulations and recommendations associated with EXO deployment. Further impact may eventually occur through policymaking and sustain the EXOs’ continuous improvement.

Last Modified: 01/12/2024
Modified by: Zhenhua Zhu