4.6 Article

Instrumented Ergonomic Risk Assessment Using Wearable Inertial Measurement Units: Impact of Joint Angle Convention

Journal

IEEE ACCESS
Volume 9, Issue -, Pages 7293-7305

Publisher

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3048645

Keywords

Task analysis; Three-dimensional displays; Two dimensional displays; Biomedical monitoring; Kinematics; Cameras; Risk management; Ergonomic risk assessment; inertial measurement unit; material handling tasks; RULA; work-related musculoskeletal disorders

Funding

  1. Alberta Ministry of Labour, Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Futures-Research Funding Program [OHSFRFPP 095245031]
  2. Hadhramout Establishment for Human Development Scholarship

Ask authors/readers for more resources

The study aimed to investigate the accuracy and repeatability of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) system for in-field RULA score assessment and compared it with reference values obtained by a motion-capture camera system. Experimental results showed that the 2D convention had significantly smaller root-mean-square error (RMSE) for trunk and neck joint angles, while the 3D convention had moderate agreement with the reference system. The wearable IMU system, along with the 2D convention, could be considered as an accurate and repeatable ergonomic risk assessment tool.
The Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) is frequently used to monitor body posture for early risk prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders. However, RULA measurements that are based on workers' self-report or external rater observation suffer from low repeatability. Thus, the objective of this study was to investigate the accuracy and repeatability of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) system for in-field RULA score assessment during manual material handling tasks using 3D Cardan angles and 2D projection angles against reference values obtained by a motion-capture camera system. The experimental results showed that for trunk and neck joint angles, the 2D convention had significantly (p < 0.05) smaller root-mean-square error (RMSE), while for other upper-body angles, the convention with significantly smaller RMSE depended on the angle under analysis. Also, the 3D convention showed a moderate agreement with the reference system, while the 2D convention showed a substantial agreement for two tasks and a moderate agreement for one task. Moreover, the intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.82 to 0.94 for the 3D convention and 0.87 to 0.95 for the 2D convention for repeated trials performed by each participant. Therefore, the wearable IMU system, along with the 2D convention, could be considered as an accurate and repeatable ergonomic risk assessment tool.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.6
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available