BACKGROUND: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) are a serious problem, and manual material handling (MMH) tasks remain common in most industries. Thus, a lightweight and active exoskeleton is needed. OBJECTIVE: A facile, convenient, multifunctional, wearable lumbar support exoskeleton (WLSE) was proposed to relieve the muscular tension and fatigue especially in the way of WMSDs. METHOD: Based on the screw theory and virtual power principle, the parallel structure was used as the scheme choice for selecting suitable actuators and joints. The exoskeleton, which was characterized by high adaptability and complied with human motion, included branch unit, mechanism branch units, control units and sensors. Furthermore, using surface electromyography (sEMG) signal evaluation, an experiment which contains several tests was designed to evaluate whether WLSE had effect on supporting and reliving muscular fatigue while lifting-up different weight of objects under wearing without traction (T1) and wearing with traction (T2). RESULTS: Data collected were analyzed statistically by the two-way ANOVA. It showed that the RMS of sEMG was obviously reduced while carrying the heavy objects with WLSE under T2, and the MF values always performed the decreasing trend in T2/T1. CONCLUSION: This paper proposed a facile, convenient, multifunctional WLSE. From the results, it was concluded that the WLSE was significantly effective in reliving the muscle tension and muscle fatigue while lifting to prevent and treat WMSDs.

中文翻译：

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可穿戴式腰部支撑外骨骼并联机构的设计与评估

背景：与工作相关的肌肉骨骼疾病 (WMSD) 是一个严重的问题，而手动物料搬运 (MMH) 任务在大多数行业中仍然很常见。因此，需要一种轻质且主动的外骨骼。目的：提出一种轻便、方便、多功能、可穿戴的腰部支撑外骨骼（WLSE），以缓解肌肉紧张和疲劳，特别是WMSD的方式。方法：基于螺杆理论和虚动力原理，采用并联结构作为方案选择，选择合适的执行器和关节。外骨骼具有适应性强、符合人体运动的特点，由分支单元、机构分支单元、控制单元和传感器组成。此外，利用表面肌电（sEMG）信号评估，设计了包含多项测试的实验，以评估WLSE在无牵引（T1）和有牵引的情况下举起不同重量的物体时是否对支撑和缓解肌肉疲劳有效果。 （T2）。结果：通过双向方差分析对收集的数据进行统计分析。结果表明，在T2下使用WLSE搬运重物时，sEMG的RMS明显降低，且MF值在T2/T1内始终呈下降趋势。结论：本文提出了一种简便、方便、多功能的WLSE。结果表明，WLSE 在缓解举重时的肌肉紧张和肌肉疲劳以预防和治疗 WMSD 方面具有显着效果。