SUMMARY

The development of wearable healthcare devices has helped to increase the variety of conditions that clinicians can monitor patient health. This technological innovation has made it easier for patients to expand their range of activities. However, there exist unseen areas in industrial fields with increasing deaths per year from heat-related illnesses (HRIs) and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) that such innovation can benefit to prevent further industrial danger. The development of industrial healthcare monitors and their practical usage were challenging due to the large form factor, heavyweight, and complex structure of conventional health monitors. Here, a field-deployable soft, wearable, and wireless heart monitor is reported that measures not only the health monitoring of farm workers including heart, skin temperature, and motion but also estimates metabolic costs from heart signals. Additional tests are done to approve mechanical stability, sweat resistance, and signal quality for field deployability. Further, its potential to estimate metabolic cost from heart rate variability root means square of successive difference (HRV-RMSSD) during squatting is presented to replace conventional respiratory calorimetry with Ankle Foot Orthosis (AFO) for the first time in wearable robotics.