Distinguishing support technologies. A general scheme and its application to exoskeletons

Abstract

There is a great variety of manual activities in work and everyday life. The number and forms of various support systems reflect this variety. A classification could provide a scheme to recognize, compare, and evaluate the heterogeneous problems, approaches, and technological solutions already existing in the field. Based on previous work on a theory of support, taxonomic criteria are derived and substantiated. These criteria are used to construct a matrix in analogy to the periodic table in order to make visible the coherence as well as the differences of technical support artifacts in general and exoskeletons in particular.