A Narrative Review on Wearable Inertial Sensors for Human Motion Tracking in Industrial Scenarios

Industry 4.0 has promoted the concept of automation, supporting workers with robots while maintaining their central role in the factory. To guarantee the safety of operators and improve the effectiveness of the human-robot interaction, it is important to detect the movements of the workers. Wearable inertial sensors represent a suitable technology to pursue this goal because of their portability, low cost, and minimal invasiveness. The aim of this narrative review was to analyze the state-of-the-art literature exploiting inertial sensors to track the human motion in different industrial scenarios. The Scopus database was queried, and 54 articles were selected. Some important aspects were identified: (i) number of publications per year; (ii) aim of the studies; (iii) body district involved in the motion tracking; (iv) number of adopted inertial sensors; (v) presence/absence of a technology combined to the inertial sensors; (vi) a real-time analysis; (vii) the inclusion/exclusion of the magnetometer in the sensor fusion process. Moreover, an analysis and a discussion of these aspects was also developed.

Automated summary

This narrative review analyzes the state-of-the-art literature on the use of inertial sensors to track human motion in different industrial scenarios. It examines aspects such as publication trends, research objectives, body regions involved in motion tracking, number of inertial sensors used, presence of technology combined with inertial sensors, real-time analysis, and inclusion of magnetometers in the sensor fusion process.