Product Testing and User Experience
Exo Suits & Cognition
COMPANY
GaTech AutoRob Lab
ROLE
Research Assistant
EXPERTISE
UX Research Cognition
YEAR
2025
Project description
Georgia Tech's Automation and Robotics Lab (AutoRob) focuses its work on medical robotics, industrial robots, and service robots. As exoskeletons struggle to find their footing in the industrial complex, significant hardware improvements in recent years are bringing exo suits closer than ever to realization.
Literature indicates a significant gap in understanding of situational awareness and cognition when using the suits. We aim to fill it. This is an ongoing project.
Challenge
Situational awareness is important in construction and manufacturing - helping prevent work accidents and increasing efficiency. Under the right circumstances exoskeletal suits could be a boon but the circumstances are not yet fully understood. We investigate inertial measurement unit (IMU), cognitive load and situational awareness levels between different sets of exoskeletal suits.
Ways of working
Exoskeletal suits are divided into passive and active suits. Active suits are ones also powered by a motor. We are comparing the suits in a series of tests with the help of volunteer convenience sample.
Process
This category details the step-by-step approach taken during the project, including research, planning, design, development, testing, and optimization phases.
The project is ongoing and is set to publish around May.
Research & Planning
Followed academic standards and mimicked similar exoskeletal experiments to form the basis of our experiment.
Conducted academic research to identify existing knowledge gaps and industry challenges. Defined target testing criteria based on literary understanding and lab equipment - NASA-TLX for cognitive load and SART for situational awareness. IMU measured using dedicated app on a phone and attached to the back of the suit.
Currently in the stage of recruitment and testing sessions.
Research Goals
To conduct tests between a variety of active and passive suits AutoRob lab possesses, and to publish and present results in a conference.
Results
Here, the outcomes and achievements of the project will be highlighted, including user feedback, adoption rates, and industry recognition. Paper is planned to be ready for publication in May.