The systemic effects of wearing an industrial back belt for a repetitive asymmetric lifting task between knee and waist height have been investigated. Belt wearing significantly reduced the average heart rate by 5.3 beats per minute, constituting 21% reduction of the metabolic cost due to the exercise. Back belt significantly reduced the average systolic blood pressures by 9 mm of Hg. For manua...

Combining high throughputs and good process quality, automated material handling systems are widely used in industry. In order to fully utilize their potential, automated material handling systems have to be highly specialized and custom-built, requiring individually implemented control software. Due to the fact that a modular structure of the software is often missing, individual implementatio...

Purpose The handling of material is a high resource consuming task in many different manufacturing industries and especially in the construction sector. Global demand for material-handling products is projected to rise by 7.0 percent annually until 2014 to a total of $119 billion. Typically, work on the construction site, in the materials distribution process or in the construction materials pr...