How Familiarization Impacts Construction Workers’ Acceptance of an Active Exoskeleton: Insights from a Case Study

To promote the adoption of exoskeletons in industries, they must be effective in providing physical assistance; however, other factors, such as familiarity with their use and comfort, contribute to device acceptance and workers’ approval. During on-site testing, the use of common assessment tools (e.g., EMGs, MoCap systems, etc.) and the pool of available subjects are usually limited. Thus, evaluating the reliability of qualitative results (e.g., from questionnaires) is critical. This paper investigates the impact of introducing a back-support exoskeleton to five construction workers in operative scenarios. Key factors, including perceived physical exertion, the task workload, and overall exoskeleton acceptance, were evaluated. The results were compared before and after the workers were instructed on the proposed familiarization approach. This analysis aims to investigate the potential influence of novelty bias by assessing the consistency of users’ feedback, which shows increased agreement among workers after familiarization. The relative dispersion of responses is assessed using the Coefficient of Variation (CoV) index. The evidence suggests a potential bias and overestimation in the results obtained during the first test day (before familiarization). After familiarization, the results indicate incremental reliability for the selected questionnaires. Physical exertion perceived in the trunk (before and after familiarization) is further reduced by 0.5 out of 5, while acceptance of the device increases from 5.7 to 6.3 out of 7. The proposed method can support the adoption of industrial exoskeletons by providing a tool for assessing the reliability of qualitative data.