Exoskeletons Potential Use in the Construction Industry

By Zhenhua Zhu, Ph.D., P.Eng, and Mariya Sorensen

The construction industry is labor-intensive even with the continuous development and advent of new tools and machines in the market. Millions of people are hired and associated with different trades (e.g., laborer, carpenter, plumber, and electrician). They are heavily involved in the vast majority of skilled manual handling work. Almost 90% of their jobs require manual handling of materials for approximately one-half of their time. [1] The long-time, repetitive, and physically demanding manual handling work exposes them to a great risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs), a group of painful disorders of muscles, tendons, and nerves caused or aggravated by work.

Despite the promising effects noted from the laboratory-based studies, it is still essential and critical to collect field-based evidence to support the safe and efficient use of exoskeletons by construction workers before any decision is made to deploy exoskeletons in practice. So far, the quantitative assessment of exoskeletons’ efficacy as an intervention to control the risks of WMSDs in construction fields is limited. Most assessment works were built upon qualitative or subjective measures through interviews and surveys. To address this limitation, the Digital and Robotics Construction Research Group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has been working with the Milwaukee-based team in the M.A. Mortenson Company. Several pilot tests (photos on the previous page) were conducted to compare the joint motions, heart rates, task completion time, and opinions of professional construction workers when they perform routine tasks with and without exoskeletons. The quantitative comparison results help researchers and construction practitioners advance an understanding of the actual effectiveness, practicality, safety, and user acceptance of exoskeletons in construction fields. Also, they provide insightful thoughts on optimizing the match among exoskeletons, workers, and tasks to maximize exoskeletons’ beneficial effects and minimize their potential undesirable outcomes or risks. This ongoing work is financially supported by the National Science Foundation.

If the accumulated field-based evidence supports the efficacy of exoskeletons, it will facilitate and promote the use and integration of exoskeletons in construction operations. Then, the following benefits or broad impacts are expected: