The aim of this review was to provide an overview of assistive exoskeletons that have specifically been developed for industrial purposes and to assess the potential effect of these exoskeletons on reduction of physical loading on the body. The search resulted in 40 papers describing 26 different industrial exoskeletons, of which 19 were active (actuated) and 7 were passive (non-actuated). For 13 exoskeletons, the effect on physical loading has been evaluated, mainly in terms of muscle activity. All passive exoskeletons retrieved were aimed to support the low back. Ten-forty per cent reductions in back muscle activity during dynamic lifting and static holding have been reported. Both lower body, trunk and upper body regions could benefit from active exoskeletons. Muscle activity reductions up to 80% have been reported as an effect of active exoskeletons. Exoskeletons have the potential to considerably reduce the underlying factors associated with work-related musculoskeletal injury. Practitioner Summary: Worldwide, a significant interest in industrial exoskeletons does exist, but a lack of specific safety standards and several technical issues hinder mainstay practical use of exoskeletons in industry. Specific issues include discomfort (for passive and active exoskeletons), weight of device, alignment with human anatomy and kinematics, and detection of human intention to enable smooth movement (for active exoskeletons).

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Exoskeletons for industrial application and their potential effects on physical work load

A ballistocardiograph records the mechanical activity of the heart. We present a novel algorithm for the detection of individual heart beats and beat-to-beat interval lengths in ballistocardiograms (BCGs) from healthy subjects. An automatic training step based on unsupervised learning techniques is used to extract the shape of a single heart beat from the BCG. Using the learned parameters, the occurrence of individual heart beats in the signal is detected. A final refinement step improves the accuracy of the estimated beat-to-beat interval lengths. Compared to many existing algorithms, the new approach offers heart rate estimates on a beat-to-beat basis. The agreement of the proposed algorithm with an ECG reference has been evaluated. A relative beat-to-beat interval error of 1.79% with a coverage of 95.94% was achieved on recordings from 16 subjects.

/pdf/adaptive-beat-to-beat-heart-rate-estimation-in-3lgxkxn7s5.pdf

Adaptive Beat-to-Beat Heart Rate Estimation in Ballistocardiograms

Assessment of an active industrial exoskeleton to aid dynamic lifting and lowering manual handling tasks

This review summarizes principles and current stage of development of fiber-optic chemical sensors (FOCS) and biosensors (FOBS). Fiber optic sensor (FOS) systems use the ability of optical fibers (OF) to guide the light in the spectral range from ultraviolet (UV) (180 nm) up to middle infrared (IR) (10 μm) and modulation of guided light by the parameters of the surrounding environment of the OF core. The introduction of OF in the sensor systems has brought advantages such as measurement in flammable and explosive environments, immunity to electrical noises, miniaturization, geometrical flexibility, measurement of small sample volumes, remote sensing in inaccessible sites or harsh environments and multi-sensing. The review comprises briefly the theory of OF elaborated for sensors, techniques of fabrications and analytical results reached with fiber-optic chemical and biological sensors.

Fiber-Optic Chemical Sensors and Fiber-Optic Bio-Sensors

Evaluation of a passive exoskeleton for static upper limb activities

Wearable lower limb robotics: A review

Quantitative seismocardiography is a simple and non-invasive method of measuring compression waves generated by heart activity. It provides important information about the cardiovascular system. The first important information acquired from quantitative seismocardiogram (QSCG) is the pseudo-period rate. This paper focuses just on the detection of pseudo-periods in the QSCG signal. Two methods of detection together with a method of sophisticated data preprocessing are presented. The results of the methods are demonstrated using real data.

New methods for precise detection of systolic complexes in the signal acquired from quantitative seismocardiograph

The quantitative seismocardiography is a simple and non-invasive method of measuring compression waves generated by heart activity. It provides important information about the cardiovascular system. The first important information acquired from the quantitative seismocardiogram (QSCG) is the pseudo-period rate. This paper focuses just on the detection of the pseudoperiods in the QSCG signal. Two methods of detection together with the method of sophisticated data preprocessing are presented. The results of the methods are demonstrated using real data.

New robust methods for pseudo-period detection in seismocardiographic signal

Finding a simple and precise way to control the virtual environment is one of the goals of a lot of humancomputer interaction research. One of the approaches is using a Leap Motion optical sensor, which provides hand and finger tracking without the need of any hand-held device. However, the Leap Motion system currently supports only one sensor at the time.To overcome this limitation, we proposed a set of algorithms to combine the data from multiple Leap Motion sensors to increase the precision and the usability of the hand tracking. First, we suggested a way how to improve the calibration of the current hand pose alignment proposed by Leap Motion. Then, we proposed an approach to fuse the tracking data from multiple Leap Motion sensors to provide more precise interaction with the virtual world. For this, we implemented our very own algorithm for computing the confidence level of the tracking data that can be used to distinguish which Leap Motion sensor detects the tracked hands best. We implemented those algorithms into our MultiLeap library.We also created two demo scenes that we used to validate the correctness of our work – one for evaluation of the fusing algorithms and one for mimicking the interaction with control panels in a helicopter cockpit.

Marcel Jirina

Papers

Wearable lower limb robotics: A review

New methods for precise detection of systolic complexes in the signal acquired from quantitative seismocardiograph

New robust methods for pseudo-period detection in seismocardiographic signal

Project MultiLeap: Fusing Data from Multiple Leap Motion Sensors

Whole-cell biosensor for detection of environmental pollution — enhancement of detected bioluminescence