Body-in-the-Loop Control of Soft Robotic Exoskeletons During Virtual Manual Labor Tasks

The combination of real-time sensing of physical and mental stress in humans during virtual manual labor tasks together with state-of-the-art active soft robotic exoskeletons holds much promise towards the development of integrated, intuitive, and responsive human-machine systems for use in stressful industrial work environments. A number of devices and exoskeletons have been explored to assist industrial workers to prevent injury or to augment workers to allow them to perform enhanced tasks. This chapter examines potential applications of integrated virtual reality and robotics in industrial settings and highlights challenges and opportunities for future human-machine systems. It presents architecture of Fiber Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures for increasing the stiffness at joints based on antagonistic muscle activation in humans. Apart from stiffening, providing even modest actuation forces on the joint may be beneficial in alleviating physical stress in manual labor tasks.