Saskia Baltrusch

165 Chapter 6 Significant reductions in local discomfort in the lower back when wearing the exoskeleton were found for lower lifting (p=0.001), static forward bending (p=0.001) and static 3 point kneeling (p=0.001). Other tasks did not show significant effects of the exoskeleton (Figure 4a). When testing the groups separately, we found a significant decrease in low back discomfort in the low- back pain group for lifting (p=0.002), static forward bending (p=0.007) and 3 point kneeling position (p=0.004), but no change in the healthy group (Figure 4b). Figure 4a: Boxplots of change in local discomfort in the lower back for the various tasks. (The red line represents the sample median. The distances between the tops and bottoms are the interquartile ranges. Whiskers show the min and max values, including outliers.) *Significant change in local discomfort between exoskeleton (with) and control condition (without). Note that in this figure an increase represents a negative effect and a decrease a positive effect. Figure 4b: Difference in local discomfort between control and exo condition in the subgroups healthy participants compared to participants with low-back pain. *Significant change in local discomfort between exoskeleton (with) and control condition (without) in the respective group. 6