In Isère, an exoskeleton relieves the pain of handlers in a workshop

Every morning, when he arrives at work, Guillaume puts on a strange belt. It is actually an exoskeleton that relieves him in each of his movements.

Prevent pain

Today, this order picker at the industrial caterer Pierre Martinet has no physical pain, but he wears this motorized lumbar belt as a preventive measure, because all day long he carries heavy loads. “When I lift the parcels, the cylinders take all the weight of the parcels instead of my back and my spine.“, he explains.

The belt is equipped with four motors placed around the waist. He quickly got used to his mechanism: for a year and a half, he has not left her. “When I take the boxes by four, I really hear the cylinders moving, I feel that it takes all the load of the boxes“ adds Guillaume.

A little adaptation time is necessary to get used to the exoskeleton. For the moment, only two out of eight employees have adopted it in this workshop. Valérie, another employee of the site, wears it from time to time, because in 30 years, her position has changed a lot: “Before, we worked differently, the pallets were on the ground, we took packages from the ramps and put them on pallets, our backs were always bent.”

Reduce sick leave

This complex state-of-the-art tool costs 7000 euros each. A profitable investment for the company which already measures the effects on the health of its employees. “When you see the cost of a work stoppage, it costs much more than buying an exoskeleton! We are not saying that the belt will necessarily solve, settle all the problems, but on the other hand it can make it possible to avoid a maximum of them,” explains Eric Roudet, shipping manager at Pierre Martinet.

At the origin of this prototype, the Lille start-up Japet. Since its creation in 2017, it has sold more than 700 copies of its exoskeleton. Its main objective: to combine medical sciences, modern robotics and textile expertise to preserve the health of workers.