Towards Supernumerary Robotic Limbs as Personal Protection Equipment

In the last decade, the advent of supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) from the research community has shown important benefits in many fields. Based on their design, SRLs can provide workers with additional limbs for augmenting their abilities, e.g. grasping multiple objects simultaneously or helping for balancing in near-ground tasks. In this paper we show as this kind of technology can play an important role in the safety and ergonomic of workers, reducing vibration transmission along the arm and relocating loads on the worker’s joints. This may open the way to a new generation of personal protection equipment (PPE).