The highs and lows of lifting loads: SPM analysis of multi-segmental spine angles in healthy adults during manual handling with increased load.

Manual handling personnel and those performing manual handling tasks in non-traditional manual handling industries continue to suffer debilitating and costly workplace injuries. Smart assistive devices are one solution to reducing musculoskeletal back injuries. Devices that provide targeted assistance need to be able to predict when and where to provide augmentation via predictive algorithms trained on functional datasets.

Exoskeleton Application to Military Manual Handling Tasks.

Objective: The aim of this review was to determine how exoskeletons could assist Australian Defence Force personnel with manual handling tasks.

Background: Musculoskeletal injuries due to manual handling are physically damaging to personnel and financially costly to the Australian Defence Force. Exoskeletons may minimize injury risk by supporting, augmenting, and/or amplifying the user's physical abilities.

Medial Gastrocnemius Muscle Activity during Single-Leg Hopping to Exhaustion.

This study described changes in leg muscle activation characteristics during exhaustive single-leg hopping. Twenty-seven healthy men performed trials (132 hops/min) to exhaustion, without a target height, to a target height with visual feedback and target height with tactile feedback. Mean muscle activation amplitude of the medial gastrocnemius (MG) decreased during the anticipatory period while duration of MG activity was maintained when hopping to a target height and contrasted the changes during hopping without a target height.

Consensus paper on testing and evaluation of military exoskeletons for the dismounted combatant.

Enhancing the capabilities of the dismounted combatant has been an enduring goal of international military research communities. Emerging developments in exoskeleton technology offers the potential to augment the dismounted combatant's capabilities. However, the ability to determine the value proposition of an exoskeleton in a military context is difficult due to the variety of methods and metrics used to evaluate previous devices.

A Comparison of Vertical Stiffness Values Calculated from Different Measures of Center of Mass Displacement in Single-Leg Hopping.

This study assessed the agreement between K calculated from 4 different methods of estimating vertical displacement of the center of mass (COM) during single-leg hopping. Healthy participants (N = 38) completed a 10-s single-leg hopping effort on a force plate, with 3D motion of the lower limb, pelvis, and trunk captured. Derived variables were calculated for a total of 753 hop cycles using 4 methods, including: double integration of the vertical ground reaction force, law of falling bodies, a marker cluster on the sacrum, and a segmental analysis method.

Adaptation of lower limb movement patterns when maintaining performance in the presence of muscle fatigue.

Adaptations in lower limb movement patterns were examined when performance was maintained during a fatiguing repetitive loading task. Forty recreationally active male and female participants performed single-leg hopping to volitional exhaustion at 2.2Hz to a submaximal height.

Does providing real-time augmented feedback affect the performance of repeated lower limb loading to exhaustion?

Introduction: This study aimed to determine whether real-time augmented feedback influenced performance of single-leg hopping to volitional exhaustion.

Methods: Twenty-seven healthy, male participants performed single-leg hopping (2.2 Hz) with (visual and tactile feedback for a target hop height) or without feedback on a force plate.

The reliability of determining the onset of medial gastrocnemius muscle activity during a stretch-shorten-cycle action.

The instant at which a muscle increases its level of activity from baseline represents the onset of muscle activity. Accurate identification of muscle onset allows determination of temporal and amplitude characteristics of the surface electromyography (sEMG) signal. This investigation determined the intra- and inter-tester reliability for determining the onset of medial gastrocnemius (MG) activity using visual and automated methods.