Work Life in the Light of the Demographic Change: Case Study Force Assistive Device for Craftsmen

The trend of aging society has impacts on all parts of daily life. For instance work lifetime is expected to increase and in combination with rising quality and efficiency demands there is need for new technologies, working processes and assistance systems. For the latter, applied to the domain of craftsmen, systems seem to be reasonable which allow force assistance, augmentation, increase in safety and/or guidance functions. Required technology blocks to implement such functions are mainly available already today. This article is dealing with force assistance and describes an electro–mechanical system – the demonstrator of a so called “3

rd

Arm” – which actively supports the user when handling heavy power tools. The “3

rd

Arm” consists mainly of cost–effective mass–market compliant components. It is attached to a harness at the waist of the craftsman and relieves craftsmen from hard and fatiguing works. Two functions were implemented and evaluated. First the compensation of gravitational forces of the tool by means of a force control in order to achieve an utmost transparent behaviour. Secondly, so called “Virtual Fixtures” were used to implement a positioning assistance when repeating tasks are to be fulfilled at the same working height.