An Online Multi-Index Approach to Human Ergonomics Assessment in the Workplace

TL;DR

This paper presents an online multi-index framework for real-time human ergonomics assessment at work, enabling early detection of physical risk factors to prevent musculoskeletal disorders.

Contribution

It introduces a novel online multi-index approach that considers subject-specific factors and provides a comprehensive database for ergonomic risk evaluation.

Findings

The framework effectively identifies physical load contributors in manufacturing tasks.

Comparison with standard tools shows improved detection of ergonomic risks.

Experimental results support the framework's potential for preventive occupational health measures.

Abstract

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) remain one of the major occupational safety and health problems in the European Union nowadays. Thus, continuous tracking of workers' exposure to the factors that may contribute to their development is paramount. This paper introduces an online approach to monitor kinematic and dynamic quantities on the workers, providing on the spot an estimate of the physical load required in their daily jobs. A set of ergonomic indexes is defined to account for multiple potential contributors to WMSDs, also giving importance to the subject-specific requirements of the workers. To evaluate the proposed framework, a thorough experimental analysis was conducted on twelve human subjects considering tasks that represent typical working activities in the manufacturing sector. For each task, the ergonomic indexes that better explain the underlying physical load were identified, following a statistical analysis, and supported by the outcome of a surface electromyography (sEMG) analysis. A comparison was also made with a well-recognised and standard tool to evaluate human ergonomics in the workplace, to highlight the benefits introduced by the proposed framework. Results demonstrate the high potential of the proposed framework in identifying the physical risk factors, and therefore to adopt preventive measures. Another equally important contribution of this study is the creation of a comprehensive database on human kinodynamic measurements, which hosts multiple sensory data of healthy subjects performing typical industrial tasks.