Wearable passive upper-limb exoskeletons have been proposed and commercialized as tools to improve the ergonomics of workers in repetitive or physically demanding tasks. In the study presented here, an innovative upper-limb exoskeleton is presented, along with experimental tests with human subjects. The device, called proto-MATE, is characterized by two distinguishing design features: a highly ergonomic human-robot kinematics architecture and bioinspired assistance, created to partially compensate for the user's arm weight. Experimental tests investigated the device's effects on the physical strain of eight upper-limb muscles. These tests also quantified the kinematic coupling between the device and the user by means of specific kinematics-related parameters. The protocol included overhead tasks that are representative of the target application and tasks that generalize nontargeted upperlimb movements and may occur in real working conditions.

中文翻译：

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Pro-MATE的实验评估：一种符合人体工程学的新型上肢外骨骼，可减轻工人的身体疲劳

穿戴式被动上肢外骨骼已被提出并商业化，以作为在重复性或体力要求较高的任务中改善工人人体工学的工具。在这里提出的研究中，提出了一种创新的上肢外骨骼，以及对人体的实验测试。该设备称为proto-MATE，其特点是具有两个与众不同的设计特征：高度符合人体工程学的人机机器人运动学体系结构和生物启发式辅助功能，旨在部分补偿用户的手臂重量。实验测试研究了该设备对八只上肢肌肉的物理应变的影响。这些测试还通过特定的运动学相关参数来量化设备与用户之间的运动学耦合。