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Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures

Ergonomics of human workers is one of the key elements in design and evaluation of production processes. Human ergonomics have a major impact on productivity as well as chronic health risks incurred by inappropriate working postures and conditions. In this paper we propose a novel method for estimat...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Peternel, Luka, Schøn, Daniel Tofte, Fang, Cheng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7819876/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33488376
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.590241
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author Peternel, Luka
Schøn, Daniel Tofte
Fang, Cheng
author_facet Peternel, Luka
Schøn, Daniel Tofte
Fang, Cheng
author_sort Peternel, Luka
collection PubMed
description Ergonomics of human workers is one of the key elements in design and evaluation of production processes. Human ergonomics have a major impact on productivity as well as chronic health risks incurred by inappropriate working postures and conditions. In this paper we propose a novel method for estimating and communicating the ergonomic work condition called Binary Work-Condition Map, which provides a visualized feedback about work conditions of different configurations of an arm. The map is of binary nature and is derived by imposing the desired thresholds on considered ergonomic and safety related criteria. Therefore, the suggested arm postures in the map guarantee that all considered criteria are satisfied. This eliminates the ambiguity compared to state-of-the-art maps that uses continuous scales derived from weighted sum of multiple ergonomics criteria. In addition, to combine the advantages of both the binary map and the continuous map, we additionally propose a Hybrid Work-Condition Map that rules out unsuitable workspace with the binary map approach and renders the suitable workspace with the continuous map approach. The proposed approach was tested in simulation for various tasks and conditions. In addition, we conducted subjective evaluation experiments to compare the proposed methods with the state-of-the art method regarding the usability. The results indicated that the binary map is simpler to use, while the hybrid map is a good tradeoff between the binary and the continuous map. In selecting the map, strong points of each map should be considered with respect to the requirements of a specific application and task.
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spelling pubmed-78198762021-01-23 Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures Peternel, Luka Schøn, Daniel Tofte Fang, Cheng Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Ergonomics of human workers is one of the key elements in design and evaluation of production processes. Human ergonomics have a major impact on productivity as well as chronic health risks incurred by inappropriate working postures and conditions. In this paper we propose a novel method for estimating and communicating the ergonomic work condition called Binary Work-Condition Map, which provides a visualized feedback about work conditions of different configurations of an arm. The map is of binary nature and is derived by imposing the desired thresholds on considered ergonomic and safety related criteria. Therefore, the suggested arm postures in the map guarantee that all considered criteria are satisfied. This eliminates the ambiguity compared to state-of-the-art maps that uses continuous scales derived from weighted sum of multiple ergonomics criteria. In addition, to combine the advantages of both the binary map and the continuous map, we additionally propose a Hybrid Work-Condition Map that rules out unsuitable workspace with the binary map approach and renders the suitable workspace with the continuous map approach. The proposed approach was tested in simulation for various tasks and conditions. In addition, we conducted subjective evaluation experiments to compare the proposed methods with the state-of-the art method regarding the usability. The results indicated that the binary map is simpler to use, while the hybrid map is a good tradeoff between the binary and the continuous map. In selecting the map, strong points of each map should be considered with respect to the requirements of a specific application and task. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-01-08 /pmc/articles/PMC7819876/ /pubmed/33488376 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.590241 Text en Copyright © 2021 Peternel, Schøn and Fang. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Peternel, Luka
Schøn, Daniel Tofte
Fang, Cheng
Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title_full Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title_fullStr Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title_full_unstemmed Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title_short Binary and Hybrid Work-Condition Maps for Interactive Exploration of Ergonomic Human Arm Postures
title_sort binary and hybrid work-condition maps for interactive exploration of ergonomic human arm postures
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7819876/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33488376
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.590241
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