Effect on Muscle Strength During Lifting Tasks with Wearable Suit Using Wire and Elastic Bands

Abstract

Recently, as modern people’s consumption trends have been concentrated on contactless consumption such as online shopping since the 2019 COVID-19 Pandemic, the delivery industry, which is in charge of physical movement of online consumption activities, has also seen a series of utilization and demand. However, in contrast to the rapidly increasing volume of couriers, the labor environment of courier workers is poor, and the rapid increase in demand for courier service after the 2019 COVID-19 Pandemic has led to the rise in musculoskeletal diseases in courier workers. Various muscle support systems such as wearable robots have been developed to prevent musculoskeletal diseases in industrial sites, but the system is bulky, so the total weight is high, they are inconvenient to wear, and the wearers cannot freely perform activities when power is not supplied. In this study, the disadvantages of hard wearable robot systems, such as weight and power supply, were supplemented through elastic rubber bands and wires. In addition, wearable suits were developed to reduce the load on the body, prevent overwork, verify the effectiveness of work clothes, and prevent musculoskeletal diseases in courier workers. The experiment was conducted to verify whether the wearable suit affects muscle strength assistance by measuring the muscle usage when lifting weight after measuring the Maximum Voluntary Contract (MVC). The lifting types were classified into three types, and the strength assistance effects of the waist and lower extremities according to the wearable suit were compared.