Human-centred and ergonomic work design is one of the most important drivers for increasing the competitiveness of the European Union. As a flexible, person-specific occupational measure, exoskeletons promise great potential for effectively reducing individual ergonomic stress. Digital human models can provide important insights and offer great potential for systematising the effect and targeted use of exoskeletons, supporting their effective implementation in practice. In this article, digital human models are applied on two levels. Firstly, a realistic industrial logistics scenario in which boxes had to be relocated is designed with the help of a digital human model for workplace and process planning and secondly, a new biomechanical evaluation methodology to analyse intended and unintended effects on internal stress on the human body is demonstrated by applying musculoskeletal exoskeleton human models of four test subjects. Finally, the modelled biomechanical support tendencies of one exoskeleton are preliminary validated using EMG measurement data of the back muscles collected from the four male workers. The preliminary analysis of two back-support exoskeletons to demonstrate the new methodological approach confirms the expected, intended effects in the lower back and reveals unintended effects, such as e.g. changes in knee kinetics when applying a soft or hard-frame exoskeleton. Furthermore, the exemplary results to demonstrate the methodological approach expose notable differences between the test subjects, which underlines the relevance of person-specific evaluation and consideration of exoskeleton support. The preliminary validation shows a correlation between the modelled and the EMG-measured biomechanical exoskeleton support of the considered back muscles.

Demographic changes and increasing numbers of older and performance-restricted employees is a challenge for the industry. A digital workplace design can support value-adding and ability-appropriate employment. In the early planning phase, digital human models can be used for ergonomic and economic workplace design. However, few digital human models allow the consideration of individual abilities and age-related change to enable ability-appropriate work design. On the example of the design of a production area including logistic activities, a procedure for designing ability-and age-appropriate workplaces is presented. The planning system ema Work Designer is used to simulate the work process under consideration of representative digital human models with different characteristics (anthropometry, flexibility, strength) related to age. The simulated process is assessed by accessibility, biomechanical analyses (e.g. EAWS) and time analysis. As a result, it is shown that with the developed method using digital human models with different abilities it can be ensured that workers with and without restrictions can work together in the work systems. By introducing various design measures, the ergonomic risk is reduced from high to moderate risk scores and the operational capability of all relevant employee groups is guaranteed. The execution time was reduced significant.

Using a real workplace as an example, this paper describes how digital human modelling software facilitates planning and simulating work processes. This is closely connected to the ongoing activities and results from the SOPHIA project in which the inferred parameters are used for ergonomic assessments. Moreover, multiple options for digital human modelling, developed in the SOPHIA project, will be presented. In this context, the development process of personalized human models within the project to optimize the worker’s ergonomics when performing tasks with a robotic system or exoskeleton will be described. The paper closes with a short description of what still needs to be addressed to ensure personalized, reliable and robust digital human modelling for an industrial setting. Practical Relevance: This paper shows the scientific process within the SOPHIA project on the subject of digital human models. This provides an overview of the current state of research, as well as available and innovative approaches for modelling people at the workplace. It is shown to what extent the goal of creating personalized human models to optimize the ergonomics of employees that work with robotic systems or exoskeletons has already been achieved. Therewith, it is displayed which developments can already be used and which components are still missing in order to better simulate and thus enrich the interaction between humans and robots/exoskeletons.

For planning and designing production and work systems, a holistic approach is necessary that considers both levels of factory planning and workplace design. Currently, separate digital tools are mostly used for the design of factories and the detailed planning of work systems. That leads to workers being considered inadequately or too late in the planning process of production. The consequence can be a time-consuming and costly replanning to solve problems in existing production and work processes. Using the example of an assembly of washing machines, an iterative approach is presented for a combined digital planning on factory and workplace level. A holistic design of the assembly line is carried out using the ema Software Suite, consisting of the ema Plant Designer (emaPD) and ema Work Designer (emaWD). In the case study, emaPD is used to optimize production elements such as operating resources, layout, and logistics by considering the material flow, throughput times, and production costs. These results are applied for detailed planning and design at the workstation level with emaWD, which uses an algorithmic approach for self-initiated motion generation based on objective task descriptions. The generated simulations are examined and optimized based on production time estimation (MTM-UAS) and ergonomic risk assessments (EAWS, NIOSH, reach and vision analysis) as well as workers’ abilities (age, anthropometry). As a result, an efficient factory with an optimized material flow could be planned while minimizing the manufacturing costs and throughput times while complying with the space specifications and ergonomics. The takeover of ergonomically unfavorable processes by robots as hybrid workstations enables, among other things, an improvement in ergonomics. The digital planning approach of combined factory (emaPD) and workplace design (emaWD) also enable early, coordinated, efficient planning of economical and ergonomic production.

The demographic change and an increasing number of older and performance-restricted employees is a challenge for the industry. A prospective and corrective workplace design supports value-adding and ability-appropriate employment. In the early planning phase, digital human models can be used for ergonomic workplace design. Current digital human models and software systems usually do not have functions and methods for the digital design of workplaces for older and performance-restricted employees. A functional extension of digital human models can support the digital planning of ability-appropriate workplaces. This requires new functions in digital human models and new workflows for digital planning. Based on two industrial examples, the planning tool ema Work Designer is used to design the respective work processes according to age and ability. For this purpose, suitable age and ability-specific populations are defined using the human model configurator and used in the simulation. The application of ergonomic methods such as EAWS and job requirement profiles enable a detailed age- and ability-based workplace design. By means of a suitable redesign, the use of all populations, from small old women (F05-AK60-B05) to young large men (M95-AK20-B50), could be guaranteed in the industrial examples. In the sense of a prospective work design, ergonomic and productivity-related potentials could also be identified and optimized at an early stage without real prototypes or pilot structures. This results in significant cost and time savings. The 3D visualization also supports the communication and the acceptance of the planned measures. Practical Relevance : This article describes the consideration of age factors and performance restrictions in digital human models and planning tools using the example of ema Work Designer. The developed methods and workflows for ability-appropriate workplace design are then applied to use cases from industry.

OCCUPATIONAL APPLICATIONSGlobalization and eCommerce continue to fuel unprecedented growth in the logistics and warehousing markets. Simultaneously, the biggest bottleneck for these industries is their human capital. Where automation and robotic solutions fail to deliver a return on investment, humans frequently take over handling tasks that place harmful loads and strains on the body. Occupational exoskeletons can reduce fatigue and strain by supporting the lower spine and are designed to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders and other injuries. They are a mid- to long-term investment for industries to improve ergonomic conditions in workplaces, with the potential for reducing absences from work, sick days logged, and workers compensation claims. To examine the effectiveness of the newly introduced Paexo Back exoskeleton, a study was completed with 10 participants who completed manual load handling tasks with and without the exoskeleton. Key findings include significant reductions in metabolic effort and low back loading when the exoskeleton is worn.

Overheadwork is classifiedas one of the major risk factors for the onset of shoulder work-related musculoskeletal disorders and muscle fatigue. Upper-limb exoskeletons can be used to assist workers during the execution of industrial overhead tasks to prevent such disorders. Twelve novice participants have been equipped with inertial and force/torque sensors to simultaneously estimate the whole-body kinematics and the joint torques (i.e., internal articular stress) by means of a probabilistic estimator, while performing an overhead task with a pointing tool. An evaluation has been performed to analyze the effect at the whole-body level by considering the conditions of wearing and not-wearing PAEXO, a passive exoskeleton for upper-limb support during overhead work. Results point out that PAEXO provides a reduction of the whole-body joint effort across the experimental task blocks (from 66% to 86%). Moreover, the analysis along with five different body areas shows that 1) the exoskeleton provides support at the human shoulders by reducing the joint effort at the targeted limbs, and 2) that part of the internal wrenches is intuitively transferred from the upper body to the thighs and legs, which is shown with an increment of the torques at the legs joints. The promising outcomes show that the probabilistic estimation algorithm can be used as a validation metric to quantitatively assess PAEXO performances, paving thus the way for the next challenging milestone, such as the optimization of the human joint torques via adaptive exoskeleton control.

The paper describes the activities of the European project SOPHIA, Socio-Physical Interaction Skills for Cooperative Human-Robot Systems in Agile Production. The consortium involves European partners from academia, research organizations and industry. The main goal of the project is to develop a new generation of CoBots and Wearbots and advanced instrumental-based biomechanical risk assessment tools in industrial scenarios to reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders and to improve productivity in industry 4.0. Further aim of the project is to create the basis for new ergonomic international Standards for manual handling activities.

The 3D planning software EMA offers a combined approach which takes into account the factory planning level and the detailed planning at the single work station level. Ema Work Designer supports digital production planning, prospective ergonomics and productivity assessment by providing a more efficient and accurate approach to 3D human simulation of manual and semi-automatic tasks at the micro level. Additionally, the new module EMA Plant Designer allows to include entire factories and production lines for evaluation of lead time, production costs, material flow, buffer position, space and layout at the macro level. An application example shows that ergonomic and productivity design don’t contradict each other, if they are considered early in the design phase in one common software system. Many practical experiences suggest that this approach facilitates cooperation between different business units that are traditionally separated, such as factory/facility planning, manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering, production, and health & safety.

Exoskeletons are currently introduced for several industrial applications, but in many cases the efficiency of such devices in supporting heavy physical work has not been fully proved yet. Biomechanical simulation could considerably contribute to determining the efficiency of exoskeletons in various use cases with different user populations. In this paper we present an approach to extent laboratory and field studies by using the software AnyBody Modelling System. The biomechanical simulation is applied to the “Paexo Shoulder”, a commercial exoskeleton provided by Ottobock. Results show that the exoskeleton substantially reduces muscle activation and joint reaction forces in the shoulder and does not increase activation or forces in the lumbar spine. Comparison with laboratory measurements show very similar results. This indicates that the simulation framework could be used to evaluate changes in internal body loads as a result of wearing exoskeletons and thereby, supplements laboratory experiments and field tests during exoskeleton design and development.

Vor dem Hintergrund des demografischen Wandels erlangt die Sicherstellung eines wertschöpfenden und fähigkeitsgerechten Einsatzes leistungsgewandelter und älterer Beschäftigter durch eine prospektive Arbeitsgestaltung weiter an Bedeutung. Insbesondere in der frühen Phase der Produktionsplanung sind digitale Menschmodelle zur präventiven Absicherung ergonomisch günstiger Arbeitsplätze und -prozesse geeignet.

Eine der grosen Herausforderungen in der Industrie 4.0 ist die anforderungsgerechte Integration des Menschen. Es wird auch weiterhin Aufgaben in der Produktion geben, die seine hohe Flexibilitat und manuelle Geschicklichkeit erfordern. Dabei kommen zunehmend neuartige technische Assistenzsysteme zum Einsatz, wie z.B. kollaborierende Roboter und Exoskelette. Diese sollen den Menschen im Fertigungsprozess optimal unterstutzen. Dazu mussen sie moglichst ergonomisch gestaltet werden, um eine effiziente Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion sicherzustellen. Die menschengerechte Arbeitsgestaltung ist somit weiterhin von groser Bedeutsamkeit, auch wenn sich die Rolle des Menschen im Rahmen von Industrie 4.0 und der voranschreitenden Digitalisierung in der Fertigung verandert. Anhand von drei Beispielen wird aufgezeigt, wie dieses mit Hilfe von digitalen Menschmodellen und 3D-Simulation gelingen kann.

Abstract Introduction Recently, many industrial exoskeletons for supporting workers in heavy physical tasks have been developed. However, the efficiency of exoskeletons with regard to physical strain reduction has not been fully proved, yet. Several laboratory and field studies have been conducted, but still more data, that cannot be obtained solely by behavioral experiments, are needed to investigate effects on the human body. Methods This paper presents an approach to extend laboratory and field research with biomechanical simulations using the AnyBody Modeling System. Based on a dataset recorded in a laboratory experiment with 12 participants using the exoskeleton Paexo Shoulder in an overhead task, the same situation was reproduced in a virtual environment and analyzed with biomechanical simulation. Results Simulation results indicate that the exoskeleton substantially reduces muscle activity and joint reaction forces in relevant body areas. Deltoid muscle activity and glenohumeral joint forces in the shoulder were decreased between 54 and 87%. Simultanously, no increases of muscle activity and forces in other body areas were observed. Discussion This study demonstrates how a simulation framework could be used to evaluate changes in internal body loads as a result of wearing exoskeletons. Biomechanical simulation results widely agree with experimental measurements in the previous laboratory experiment and supplement such by providing an insight into effects on the human musculoskeletal system. They confirm that Paexo Shoulder is an effective device to reduce physical strain in overhead tasks. The framework can be extended with further parameters, allowing investigations for product design and evaluation.

Due to the epochal changes introduced by “Industry 4.0”, it is getting harder to apply the varying approaches for biomechanical risk assessment of manual handling tasks used to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMDs) considered within the International Standards for ergonomics. In fact, the innovative human–robot collaboration (HRC) systems are widening the number of work motor tasks that cannot be assessed. On the other hand, new sensor-based tools for biomechanical risk assessment could be used for both quantitative “direct instrumental evaluations” and “rating of standard methods”, allowing certain improvements over traditional methods. In this light, this Letter aims at detecting the need for revising the standards for human ergonomics and biomechanical risk assessment by analyzing the WMDs prevalence and incidence; additionally, the strengths and weaknesses of traditional methods listed within the International Standards for manual handling activities and the next challenges needed for their revision are considered. As a representative example, the discussion is referred to the lifting of heavy loads where the revision should include the use of sensor-based tools for biomechanical risk assessment during lifting performed with the use of exoskeletons, by more than one person (team lifting) and when the traditional methods cannot be applied. The wearability of sensing and feedback sensors in addition to human augmentation technologies allows for increasing workers’ awareness about possible risks and enhance the effectiveness and safety during the execution of in many manual handling activities.

The software tool EMA (“Editor for Manual Work Activities”) facilitates digital production planning and ergonomics assessment by providing a more efficient and accurate approach to 3D human simulation. EMA uses a modular system for describing human work activities based on a pre-defined library of “complex operations”, which allows the generation and simulation of human movements with highly-automated algorithms. Moreover, EMA includes standard tools for the assessment of ergonomic strains (EAWS – “Ergonomic Assessment Worksheet”) and production time (MTM – “Methods Time Measurement”). After introducing some basic analysis functions of EMA and their typical use cases, this paper presents an evaluation study that examines the validity of EMA ergonomic evaluations in comparison to paper-pencil-assessments with EAWS. Moreover, this paper shows several use cases of the EMA software application in automotive and aviation industry. These applications illustrate that EMA considerably reduces the effort for preparing human simulations and enables the user to analyze ergonomic conditions (body posture, action forces, manual load handling) and productivity (e.g., walk ways) very thoroughly.

Modern digital human simulation tools try to generate motions over an decreased number of input information to pass the method of step-by-step motion generation as it has been common until now. A key feature of EMA is the self-initiated motion generation, which decreases the effort for users in simulation preparation and increases the validity of simulation results in terms of realistic motion trajectories and biomechanical correctness. EMA has been designed for the simulation of human work activities in industrial production. EMA is already capable of reproducing most of common work-related activities, but there is still a need to improve its performance for some specific tasks. With the advancing number of automatically generated movement, the responsibility of the software to produce valid and reliable movement rises to a new level. Furthermore the necessity of valid motor behavior is based on the requirement of a correct assessment of work time and ergonomics in the simulation. Such assessment functions are already implemented using ‘state-of-the-art’ methods like MTM (Methods Time Measurement) for time analysis and EAWS (Ergonomic Assessment Worksheet) for ergonomics risk evaluation. In order to improve the quality of the ergonomic, time-related and visual simulation results, several studies have recently been carried out. The results of these studies show a large range in variation and complexity leading to the question, how to transfer information gained with scientific studies into explicit implementations for digital human modeling software.

Overhead work is a frequent cause of shoulder work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Exoskeletons offering arm support have the potential to reduce shoulder strain, without requiring large scale reorganization of the workspace. Assessment of such systems however requires to take multiple factors into consideration. This paper presents a thorough in-lab assessment of PAEXO, a novel passive exoskeleton for arm support during overhead work. A list of evaluation criteria and associated performance metrics is proposed to cover both objective and subjective effects of the exoskeleton, on the user and on the task being performed. These metrics are measured during a lab study, where 12 participants perform an overhead pointing task with and without the exoskeleton, while their physical, physiological and psychological states are monitored. Results show that using PAEXO reduces shoulder physical strain as well as global physiological strain, without increasing low back strain nor degrading balance. These positive effects are achieved without degrading task performance. Importantly, participants' opinions of PAEXO are positive, in agreement with the objective measures. Thus, PAEXO seems a promising solution to help prevent shoulder injuries and diseases among overhead workers, without negatively impacting productivity.

Exoskelette können Arbeitskräfte bei ergonomisch ungünstigen Arbeitsbedingungen wie Überkopfarbeit unterstützen und körperlich entlasten. Im folgenden Artikel wird ein Ansatz zur prospektiven Bewertung von Exoskeletten unter Einsatz von digitalen Menschsimulationen vorgestellt und anhand einer Überkopftätigkeit mit und ohne Einsatz des Exoskeletts „Paexo Shoulder“ der Firma Ottobock unter Einsatz des biomechanischen Menschmodells AnyBody angewendet. Vorläufige Ergebnisse der Modellierung zeigen eine Reduktion der Belastungen im Schulterbereich beim Einsatz des Exoskeletts.

The manufacturing industry is among the top wealthgenerating sectors of the global economy and accounted for 15.3% and 10%, respectively, of the total European and American workforce in 2018 [1], [2]. Despite its crucial role, manufacturing is facing a critical challenge based on a reduction of skilled labor availability. This trend is impos- ing a bottleneck on growth due to the demands of an increasingly competitive market. The aging workforce is not helping this shortfall either, as the available workforce is less able to perform burdensome industrial tasks in an efficient and productive manner.

Digital human modeling tools should be easy to apply, but they still need to produce realistic and correct results. The editor for manual work activities (EMA) simulation software is using an algorithmic approach for self-initiated motion generation based on objective task descriptions. This decreases the user effort for simulation preparation and increases simulation validity because the user has limited influence on simulation results. EMA has been designed for simulating human work activities in industrial production. Thus, it is very important that simulation and evaluation functions are based on accepted industry standards, such as Methods Time Measurement for time calculation and ergonomic assessment worksheet for ergonomics risk assessment. Although EMA is capable of simulating a great variety of human work motions, there is an increasing need of considering the human variability in such simulations. This requirement refers to the key properties of the digital human model (e.g., anthropometrics, physical abilities) and the simulated motion behavior (e.g., motion strategies, errors). To improve the validity and variability of EMA simulations, several studies have been carried out recently. Results show, for example, that it is necessary to consider age-related changes in human motion behavior and enable the software user to define and analyze alternative motion strategies.