Ergonomic Risk Assessment of Developing Musculoskeletal Disorders in Workers with the Microsoft Kinect: TRACK TMS

摘要

Routine ergonomic assessment of postures and gestures in the workplace aremostly conducted by visual observations, either direct or based on videorecordings. Nowadays, low-cost three-dimensional cameras like Microsoft Kinectopen the possibility of recording the full kinematics of workers in anon-intrusive way, providing a more precise, and reliable assessment of theirmotor strategies. As an illustration, we focus on a peculiar kind of workers:professional musicians (violinists), whose playing is representative of a worksituation involving repeated gestures and postures that can be described asnon-ergonomic. We show that the Microsoft Kinect can be efficiently used toquantify the motion performed by these musicians. Moreover, we argue thatlow-cost three-dimensional cameras can be a useful aid in ergonomic riskassessment of developing musculoskeletal disorders and give the example of therepetition of movements and postural items included in the OCRA checklist,whose scoring can be facilitated by such a device, as addressed in our TRACKTMS research project.