Saskia Baltrusch

58 Chapter 3 3 Results When wearing the exoskeleton, the objective performance decreased in 7 out of 10 tasks and showed a trend towards improvement in only one, namely forward bend stand (Figure 2). Figure 2: Change in objective performance for the various tasks. To facilitate comparison of the different tasks, values were normalized to score in the control condition (without exoskeleton). The dotted lines represent the division between the groups of tasks (fully described in table 1), in which the user is potentially assisted (left side), tasks, in which the user is potentially hindered by resistance against movement generated by the device (middle) and basic tasks requiring participants to use a large range of motion (right side). If there was no change in functional performance a bar for that task is not visible. * Significant change in functional performance between exoskeleton (with) and control condition (without). Significant reductions in performance between exoskeleton and control condition were found for carrying time (5.2s ± 0.9 vs. 4.8s ± 0.8; p=0.002), walking distance (533m ± 44 vs. 577m ± 42; p= 0.000), stair climbing time (14,2s ± 2.1 vs. 13.2s ± 2.1; p=0.000), ladder climbing time (15.1s ± 1.8 vs 13.4s ± 1.7; p=0.002), and fingertip to floor distance when bending the trunk (10.6cm ± 8.6 vs. 8.8cm ± 7.1; p=0.009). There were no significant differences in maximum holding time of forward bending, sit-to stand time and maximum distance in wide standing. For the tasks lifting and one-handed bank no change in functional performance was found.