Evaluation of a Real-Time Feedback Solution for Ergonomic Parameters Using Smart Sensors and User Centered Design
Musculoskeletal issues are a common problem in work life. Mental issues are rising. Employees are often not aware of the ergonomic aspects of their work, not knowing when a certain action they perform is ergonomically unhealthy. A possibility to prevent t
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Abstract Musculoskeletal issues are a common problem in work life. Mental issues are rising. Employees are often not aware of the ergonomic aspects of their work, not knowing when a certain action they perform is ergonomically unhealthy. A possibility to prevent that is to assess ergonomic parameters during work and give feedback, so that the employees can learn and improve. Common systems for ergonomic assessments are often only snapshots and give no direct feedback. Therefore, this paper presents the user centered design process (UCDP) of a real-time feedback solution for ergonomic parameters that gives employees direct feedback by using the built in sensors of everyday-life technology like smartphones, smartwatches and activity trackers to monitor different parameters of ergonomics at work and show possible improvements. A corresponding App was developed as digital interactive prototype. The UCDP thereby featured several iterations with user studies and expert evaluations to ensure high user friendliness.
Keywords Ergonomic assessment Real time feedback Industry 4.0 User centered design process Monitoring of ergonomics Limb tracking Mental and physical workload
T. Römer (&) C. Stockinger L. Bier Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (IAD) TU Darmstadt, Otto-Berndt-Straße 2, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] C. Stockinger e-mail: [email protected] L. Bier e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 M. Soares et al. (eds.), Advances in Ergonomics Modeling, Usability & Special Populations, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing 486, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41685-4_1
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1 Introduction Today, work life is subject to crucial changes. Not only for manual labor, but also for office jobs. Manufacturing companies are confronted with various emerging challenges. While the international competition rises, the market demands for faster innovation cycles at lower product prices and therefore shorter production times with less failure rates. Moreover, customers ask for more individualization options for their products. These demands require more flexible production processes and individual assembly up to batch size 1. The currently discussed approaches to master these challenges might be summed up within the forth industrial revolution, also referred to as Industry 4.0. The term has its origin in Germany. A detailed overview of this topic can be found in the works of Spath [1] or Botthof and Hartmann [2]. A short overview is available from Brettel et al. [3]. The basic idea is to integrate modern IT and communication technologies into production processes and combine them with recent innovations within assembly technology. The long term vision is, that all participants of the production process—humans, machines and products—are connected with each other with machines that use different identification methods and sensors to detect the status of products and even workers, to be able to flexib
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