Ergonomic contribution of ABLE exoskeleton in automotive industry

In PSA Peugeot Citroen factories, high precision requirements of workstations make them being manual. One of the main goal of the car manufacturer is to minimize the pain of workers while maintaining high efficiency of production lines. Consequently, assisting operators with an exoskeleton is a potential solution for improving ergonomics of painful workstations while respecting industrial constraints. To determine ergonomic performances of an exoskeleton, human joint angles and torques, ground reaction forces, and duration of operations are analysed for eight subjects performing a representative screwing task. Experiments were performed using ABLE upper-limb exoskeleton, developed by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), which has the functionality to compensate arm and tools loads. Results show a clear reduction of the sum of the joints torques, up to 38.9%, given by ABLE supply and invite to make concrete the use of exoskeletons in car assembly lines. Relevance to industry: In industries, workers performing manual operations are subjected to musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). The usage of robotic devices such as exoskeletons might then be a relevant solution to reduce workers pain and prevent-MSD. The paper describes how to assess ergonomic performances of such robotic devices for a future usage in industry. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.