Continuous ergonomic risk perception for manual assembly operations using wearable multi-sensor posture estimation
ISSN: 0144-5154
Article publication date: 21 December 2021
Issue publication date: 24 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to perform the real-time and accurate ergonomics analysis for the operator in the manual assembly, with the purpose of identifying potential ergonomic injuries when encountering labor-excessive and unreasonable assembly operations.
Design/methodology/approach
Instead of acquiring body data for ergonomic evaluation by arranging many observers around, this paper proposes a multi-sensor based wearable system to track worker’s posture for a continuous ergonomic assessment. Moreover, given the accurate neck postural data from the shop floor by the proposed wearable system, a continuous rapid upper limb assessment method with robustness to occasional posture changes, is proposed to evaluate the neck and upper back risk during the manual assembly operations.
Findings
The proposed method can retrieve human activity data during manual assembly operations, and experimental results illustrate that the proposed work is flexible and accurate for continuous ergonomic assessments in manual assembly operations.
Originality/value
Based on the proposed multi-sensor based wearable system for posture acquisition, a real-time and high-precision ergonomics analysis is achieved with the postural data arrived continuously, it can provide a more objective indicator to assess the ergonomics during manual assembly.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (52105505) and the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (3204050).
Citation
Fang, W., Fu, M. and Zheng, L. (2022), "Continuous ergonomic risk perception for manual assembly operations using wearable multi-sensor posture estimation", Assembly Automation, Vol. 42 No. 2, pp. 209-217. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-03-2021-0027
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited