PHYSICAL ASSISTANCE TO IMPROVE ERGONOMICS AT WORK

Our work focuses on estimating and improving ergonomics at work by providing users physical assistance through human-centered technologies, wearable sensors and cobotics solutions. Our research leads to various collaboration with companies and institutes including INRS (French National Research and Safety Institute for the Prevention of Occupational Accidents and Diseases) and CEA (French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission). Our collaboration with the later grows thanks to multiple co-supervised PhD theses and the use of their exoskeleton in the context of the multidisciplinary project PEPR O2R.

Interestingly, our work with exoskeletons started during the European project AnDy, with the company Ottobock and several academic partners.

Several collaborations have been later developed around the use of passive and active exoskeletons namely with the University Hospital of Nancy (CHRU Nancy) which led to three projects: ExoTurn, ExoCare and ExoSim. While the first project led to the deployment of passive exoskeletons in the Intensive Care Unit to alleviate the physical stress of physicians in prone positioning maneuvers, the follow-up project, ExoCare, studied the use of passive exoskeletons as viable tool to assist nurses during patients’ bathing. Through our current project, ExoSim, HUCEBOT aims at analyzing additional workstations and medical acts in the hospital leading to pilot studies relating to the use of existing exoskeletons and co-design new ad-hoc exoskeletons. We have been studying active exoskeletons to assist firefighters and first responders in their activities. Our collaborations with the firefighters of Nancy (SDIS54) and Safran led to the development of controllers for active exoskeletons for first responders in logistic operations (cf. CIFRE thesis of A. Oliveira Souza)  as well as a project which consists in designing a new exoskeleton solution for firefighters and first responders’ use and its software.

In the short term, we aim at developing methods and devices for exoskeletons to help our partners to deploy successfully exoskeletons in the field, providing recommendations and scientific assessment of available solutions. In the long term, we wish to provide light, affordable, and tailored modular exoskeletons for our partners.