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Ford Pilots New Exoskeleton to Help Lessen Chance of Worker Fatigue, Injury
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- evv 9y agoIf I were working in a factory, I would probably consider it less safe to strap myself to a powerful piece of machinery that may (or may not) be under my control. That said, I'm sure they are taking safety very seriously.
- jurjenh 9y ago"The non-powered vest offers protection and support against fatigue and injury by reducing the stress and strain" Would love to see how this works and maintains an adequate range of motion so as to not get in the way. Seems like it adds rigidity so that the weight is shared by the exoskeleton.
- Retric 9y agoThe 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.
- dx034 9y agoDoes 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.
- Retric 9y agoThis 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.
- BrooklynRage 9y agoThe vest isn't powered. Rather, its goal is to absorb some of the force exerted on the wearer and transmit it to the ground (instead of the person's body). A few months ago, I built a rudimentary unpowered exoskeleton similar to the Ekso models, and it did help with carrying heavy loads once I got past the initial awkwardness of wearing it.
- maxerickson 9y agoIt's upper body only (strapped to the waist). I think it has springs. http://eksobionics.com/eksoworks/ http://eksobionics.com/eksoworks/
- frandroid 9y agoSay more!
- redler 9y agoA few months ago, I built a rudimentary unpowered exoskeleton HN is truly sui generis.
- burger_moon 9y agoHave you written about it or shared pictures of it online? I'm sure many of us would enjoy a 'Show HN' of this even if it's rough looking.
- djrogers 9y ago> A few months ago, I built a rudimentary unpowered exoskeleton Umm, you cannot just drop that kind of comment on HN without more details. That's why we come here!
- Avshalom 9y agoSo will the workers be getting raises for the increase in productivity?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- forgotmysn 9y agothey haven't for the past two decades, can't imagine why they would start now
- jstarfish 9y agoThey're UAW. They're more than adequately compensated.
- seibelj 9y agoShould employees get paycuts if inflation spikes?
- claudiulodro 9y agoThey effectively are, aren't they? They get paid the same but it buys less stuff.
- seibelj 9y agoMaybe inflation was a bad example, but my point is that expecting all productivity gains to translate into pay raises is ridiculous. To start with, the exoskeleton is a huge capital expense, which the employee is not paying.
- forapurpose 9y agoTo avoid redundancy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15668017
- nimbius 9y agos/fatigue/incident rate of workers compensation/ whole lot of weasel words in here. "time away from the job" "lessen the chance of fatigue " "reduce the physical toll on employees" Its workplace injury, or "injury, illness and fatality" as defined by OSHA. If the goal really is to protect workers, then bravo. If its to push the envelope on OSHA regulations and skirt safe work environments because joe six pack climbed into a robocop costume, then no. So far the Ekso company mostly works in rehabilitative technology.
- nilved 9y agoWelcome to late stage capitalism, folks.
- vortico 9y agoIf this is what that is, I feel pretty welcome!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dang 9y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments and ignoring our requests to stop. Civil and substantive critique, of capitalism or anything else, is fine; violating the site guidelines not so much. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ourmandave 9y agoThe picture reminds me of the scene in Iron Man 2 where the Hammer Industries attempts to copy the suit and a test video shows the suit twisting the test pilot's top half all the way 'round. https://youtu.be/r2JFqC1Nvzg?t=3m9s https://youtu.be/r2JFqC1Nvzg?t=3m9s
- mncharity 9y agoSo like a torque reaction arm[1], mounted on your back, that uses your own arm? In addition to the OP sidebar video, there are these[2]. They also make an "anchor it to something nearby" portable arm. [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=torque+reaction+arm https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=torque+reaction... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpYhY5-cVyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpYhY5-cVyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=sn7qETycSUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=sn7qETycSUs
- notimetorelax 9y agoOn the page there are photos with worker doing other things like putting things in place, where torque reaction arm is fairly useless.
- chairmanwow 9y ago> Between 2005 and 2016, the most recent full year of data, the company saw an 83 percent decrease in the number of incidents that resulted in days away, work restrictions or job transfers – to an all-time low of 1.55 incidents per 100 full-time North American employees. I find it incredibly impressive for a manufacturer to achieve something like this.
- Shivetya 9y agoWhen you put effort into making a person's job better it not only reduces their actual injuries but improves their well being as they don't feel ignored. combine the two and the pay off is real.
- dgreensp 9y agoI actually think it owes to the fact that it was never reasonable for any worker to work “overhead” all day, unassisted; the human body can’t take it. Working with your arms outstretched in front of you, Minority-Report-style, has been determined to be not feasible due to fatigue, so how is working overhead reasonable? I’ve never been in a car factory or on an assembly line, but from an armchair it sounds bound to lead to a lot of strain. Why not have workers lie on their backs on carts or something?
- saturdaysaint 9y agoI'm not sure how much to congratulate them, since 2005 is almost exactly when the cost of programmable robotic arms became far cheaper than the cost of worker injuries. I've been working for automotive suppliers since 2006 and I've never seen a factory worker doing anything remotely strenuous or dangerous. Programmed robotic arms do almost literally anything involving lifting, and almost anything involving a dangerous tool or machine. Additionally, every workcenter is outfitted with lots of sensor-laden safety systems that all but ensure the operator is far away from anything that could hurt them. 99% of the accidents I see on reports involve ladders, box cutters, hi lo carts, etc.
- rconti 9y agoIt was an incredible contrast to tour the BMW factory in Munich in August, then the Tesla factory in Fremont in October. The BMW factory was highly automated, and the assembly line did so much for the humans -- positioning the cars in just the right ergonomic locations for humans to work on them. Meanwhile, over at Tesla, forklift drivers are crashing into things, dragging chunks of wood under their wheels, so much more manual labor, etc. I don't expect Tesla to be up the level of BMW; the volume isn't there to justify it. It's just really interesting. I'm trying to think of when I would have seen BMW factory employees working overhead, and I just can't think of it. I wonder why Ford would even have tasks that require this rather than just rotate the assemblies being worked on.
- johntb86 9y agoIt looks like they should get workers belay glasses as well.
- dx034 9y agoWhile they don't mention it, the vest has neck support which probably holds the head when looking up. Not sure how well that works but maybe that's enough to reduce neck problems. In that case it'd be better than belay glasses, workers can probably work faster that way.
- jonlucc 9y agoI was looking at the pictures thinking it would be a lot easier to turn the car on its side, so the bottom of the car is at a good working height directly in front of the worker and without the neck strain.
- rconti 9y agoExactly. I'd expect a modern auto assembly line to do this.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoWhat do you do about the torque exerted through all the fasteners connecting the large masses mounted to the car that are designed to have the force directed vertically through the bottom of the car? Turning the car on its side sounds like a good idea until you realized that, e.g., the seats can now twist the bottom of the body pan.
- userbinator 9y agoFor a second, I thought Ford had reintroduced the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pilot with an interesting new design/safety features.
- Gustomaximus 9y agoSide point: and understand if I get trashed here as maybe I am doing what I am about to criticise.... is it just me or are HN comments increasingly glib, political and of little informational value? This post is interesitng information with great potential for interesting discussion but the comments so far seem dominated by a style I would not normally expect on HN, something that has been happening over time but seems sharply more common these days. When I came to HN, I did so because it was not Reddit. It was dominated by 2 things; information that I didn't understand (too technical) or 2) something that improved my knowledge about the world and business, the discussions often more so than the post. From this I wonder (assuming people agree...) what can we do to hold the values of old HN discussion/posts, or is this the anthem of progress/popularity I have to accept?
- dovdovdov 9y agoThere is no good solution from a service's side, paid community, closed community, they all bring their side effects. Even these voting systems will only surface the popular opinion and not necessarily the right opinion. Best you can do is to ignore content and comments which are irrelevant to you, that way quality always meet your standards.
- buro9 9y ago> Best you can do is to ignore content and comments which are irrelevant to you, that way quality always meet your standards The community of actively participating submitters and commentators is surprisingly small. This is true for nearly all communities. If HN had a really rich ignore feature, it would take a very short time to create a personal ignore list that pruned the glib or polarising political commentators. I would say though, that whilst this has proven to be a good thing on the communities I run, I personally prefer not to use ignore features.
- dovdovdov 9y agoI meant a 'client side' ignore feature. :) Service side content filtering only creates bubbles.
- Dowwie 9y agoThey need these for nurses. Patients are heavier than ever and nurses keep getting more patients assigned.
- lliamander 9y agoI think in general the role of orderlies has been to help with these kinds of tasks. There also cranes to help get heavy patients around, but even getting them strapped in can take quite a bit of work. EDIT: but I agree, getting these for nurses would be a good idea.
- kelvin0 9y agoQuick question: how about exercise and prevention? Not saying the exoskeleton could be replaced by exercise, but simple scapular and general mobility exercises will do wonders to prevent this type of injury/fatigue/pain. Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgxr6xAB5ZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgxr6xAB5ZM
- analogmemory 9y agoBecause solving problems is seen as better. Fixing the root cause is less sexy and hard to motivate people. In this example getting people to do physical therapy or even daily exercise is not something that’ll get you a press release. I could be a bit biased tho. I’m a big proponent of doing Pilates or any whole body exercise regime
- wst_ 9y agoAt this point I can't help but let my imagination loose. I assume it would be rather academic discussion, but anyway... Would that be possible, at current state of technology, to replace entire factory plant with robots? If so why no one is doing it? If not, what are we missing? What could be the implication of such work force shift?
- jefft255 9y agoIt's more often a question of whether it's worth using a robot instead of humans. I'm pretty sure it's already possible to automate much more than what's already automated in a car production line. Sometimes, for a given task, it's way simpler to use a human worker than to design a state of the art robot for this one task.
- rconti 9y agoWhat I found is that, in high volume auto plans, humans are used for tasks like pulling wiring harnesses into the vehicle (through grommets, etc), plugging in connectors, things like that. The major body work and positioning/lifting/welding/painting is done by robots, and often there are human-guided robots for difficult tasks such as lifting 100+lb seats into place in the chassis. The robot handles the weight, the human just guides the seat into place.
- dgreensp 9y agoFrom what I understand, Tesla is working its way towards this. And there are already lots of sophisticated robots used in car assembly.
- rconti 9y agoTesla's likely behind virtually everyone in this regard just because their volume is so low. The factory is certainly not impressive in the way high-volume auto factories are.
- mobiletelephone 9y agoCollect data; build robot.
- amptorn 9y agoI hope this will be available to, like, regular humans who need it for medical reasons, not just Ford workers.