Defence Science and Technology Group, Melbourne, Australia.
Institute for Health and Sport (IHeS), Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.
Eur J Sport Sci. 2022 Jan;22(1):35-42. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2021.1923813. Epub 2021 Jun 17.
An exoskeleton is a body-worn mechanical device designed to work in concert with the user to enhance human capabilities. For the dismounted close combatant, an exoskeleton could be worn whilst performing a variety of complex tasks and duties. As such, there is a requirement for the human and the exoskeleton to readily adapt to different movements in different contexts. There have been many attempts to design an exoskeleton to improve the performance of the complex adaptive human system with limited success. Despite a vast investment in time and resources, exoskeletons have not yet been adopted for operational use by military leadership for use by the dismounted close combatant as they are yet to demonstrate substantive augmentation to individual warfighter and collective team capability. We argue that a major limitation of current exoskeleton systems is their inability to concurrently adapt to the user, task and environment. Unless a device can meet this requirement, it is unlikely to offer a comparative benefit to the dismounted close combatant. This paper will present the state of the art of current exoskeleton technology, and recommend future research necessary to reach an acceptable standard of augmentation and thereby lead to widespread adoption.
外骨骼是一种可穿戴的机械装置，旨在与用户协同工作，以增强人类的能力。对于下车的近距离战斗人员，在执行各种复杂任务和职责时，可以穿着外骨骼。因此，需要人类和外骨骼能够在不同的环境中快速适应不同的运动。尽管在设计外骨骼以提高复杂自适应人类系统的性能方面进行了许多尝试，但由于尚未证明对个别战斗人员和集体团队能力有实质性的增强，外骨骼尚未被军事领导层采用供下车的近距离战斗人员使用。我们认为，当前外骨骼系统的一个主要限制是它们无法同时适应用户、任务和环境。除非设备能够满足这一要求，否则它不太可能为下车的近距离战斗人员提供比较优势。本文将介绍当前外骨骼技术的最新进展，并建议进行必要的未来研究，以达到可接受的增强标准，从而实现广泛采用。
