Saskia Baltrusch

61 Chapter 3 Figures 5 and 6 show the local discomfort in the static holding tasks forward bending and one-handed bank position for the body regions chest, abdomen, upper back, lower back, upper legs ventral and dorsal side. The local discomfort in the forward bending task showed a significant increase at the chest when wearing the exoskeleton (0.35 ± 1.45 vs. 0.15 ± 0.20; p=0.015) and a significant decrease of local discomfort in the lower back (1.30 ± 1.48 vs. 4.35 ± 4.68; p=0.001) and upper legs (dorsal side) (0.70 ± 1.99 vs. 2.93 ± 2.45; p=0.011). Figure 5: Local discomfort in the forward bending task. Brackets indicate significant differences between the control (without) and exoskeleton condition (with); 0=no discomfort, 10=maximal discomfort. In the one-handed bank position decreased local discomfort in the upper back (0.40 ± 1.65 vs. 1.40 ± 2.33; p=0.023) was found in the exoskeleton condition compared to the control condition. 3