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A comment on Ford Pilots New Exoskeleton to Help Lessen Chance of Worker Fatigue, Injury. Parent comment

Re:Ford Pilots New Exoskeleton to Help Lessen Chance of Work... by Retric on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:55PM (#15667107)
The theory behind these devices is even minimal assistance over a long day makes a difference. Try holding your arms strait out for 10 seconds and it's easy, 10 minutes and it becomes really difficult.

Now picture something that reduces your load by 80% you still need to provide some upward assistance so lowering your arms is still effortless, but holding your arms out is also much less effort. For an easy example, sitting underwater provides this kind of support but it also clearly does not reduce range of motion.

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Re:Ford Pilots New Exoskeleton to Help Lessen Chance of Work... by dx034 on Friday November 10, 2017 @06:58AM (#15669308)
Does that mean that lowering your arms with the vest becomes harder? In that case it'll probably take workers a while to build new muscles? Or how does the vest distinguish holding body weight vs the worker lowering their arms.
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Re:Ford Pilots New Exoskeleton to Help Lessen Chance of Work... by Retric on Friday November 10, 2017 @08:37AM (#15669754)
This gets complicated because you can vary the amount of support based on the angle the arms are at. Anyway, there is no need to account for extra weight simply supporting someone's arms can make a large difference. But, you get into a lot of trade offs.
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