The Design and Evaluation of Wearable Technologies for Reducing Back Injury Risk

Abstract

Back injuries are a pervasive issue among workers and military service members, often resulting from repetitive lifting and heavy load carriage. These tasks place high loads on the spine and surrounding muscles, increasing the risk of musculoskeletal injuries which can be difficult to mitigate through traditional ergonomic interventions. This dissertation focuses on advancing wearable assistive devices—specifically back exoskeletons and weight distribution devices—to reduce back injury risk. Broadly, this work contributes to the knowledge of how to design and evaluate these wearable devices, with important implications for the fields of biomechanics, wearables, occupational safety, and ergonomics. Through four research and development projects, this work explores how wearable devices can reduce and monitor injury risk while maintaining usability. This dissertation includes testing back exoskeletons in dynamic military environments, evaluating their dual benefits of injury risk reduction and enhanced lifting performance, and developing a novel quasi-passive exosuit with integrated sensing capabilities. Additionally, it presents and evaluates a new weight distribution device for offloading body armor to a hip belt to reduce spine loads and improve user comfort. Together, these contributions expand the field’s understanding of how to develop and test wearable back-relieving technologies that are both effective and highly usable, with the ultimate goal of enabling new solutions that improve worker safety across a variety of civilian and military settings.