2021/11/11 by Marta Lorenzini, Lorenzini, Marta, Wansoo Kim +3
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Ergonomics and Musculoskeletal Disorders #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation #Occupational Health and Safety in Workplaces #Robotics (cs.RO)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.06323
openalex publication_date 2021/11/11 · openalex created_date 2022/05/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) remain one of the major\noccupational safety and health problems in the European Union nowadays. Thus,\ncontinuous tracking of workers' exposure to the factors that may contribute to\ntheir development is paramount. This paper introduces an online approach to\nmonitor kinematic and dynamic quantities on the workers, providing on the spot\nan estimate of the physical load required in their daily jobs. A set of\nergonomic indexes is defined to account for multiple potential contributors to\nWMSDs, also giving importance to the subject-specific requirements of the\nworkers. To evaluate the proposed framework, a thorough experimental analysis\nwas conducted on twelve human subjects considering tasks that represent typical\nworking activities in the manufacturing sector. For each task, the ergonomic\nindexes that better explain the underlying physical load were identified,\nfollowing a statistical analysis, and supported by the outcome of a surface\nelectromyography (sEMG) analysis. A comparison was also made with a\nwell-recognised and standard tool to evaluate human ergonomics in the\nworkplace, to highlight the benefits introduced by the proposed framework.\nResults demonstrate the high potential of the proposed framework in identifying\nthe physical risk factors, and therefore to adopt preventive measures. Another\nequally important contribution of this study is the creation of a comprehensive\ndatabase on human kinodynamic measurements, which hosts multiple sensory data\nof healthy subjects performing typical industrial tasks.\n