In the industry 4.0 era, pursuing social sustainability also means implementing a synergic collaboration between workers and robots. Indeed, robot behavior does not affect only worker safety, but it also influences his health and comfort. In this context, an important topic to be enhanced is the operator's physical monitoring aimed at reducing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. Some research studies deal with the improvement of the worker's posture during human-robot collaboration; however, non-intrusive methods applicable in real industrial scenarios are lacking. To this ending, this paper proposes a system to avoid uncomfortable and unsafe postures based on workers' anthropometric characteristics, posture monitoring by inertial and visual systems, task requirements, and a real-time risk assessment by standard methodology. The system allows the optimization of the robot behavior in order to improve worker's well-being. Finally, the virtual simulation of a real case study is presented. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

A system to improve the physical ergonomics in Human-Robot Collaboration / Ciccarelli, Marianna; Papetti, Alessandra; Scoccia, Cecilia; Menchi, Giacomo; Mostarda, Leonardo; Palmieri, Giacomo; Germani, Michele. - In: PROCEDIA COMPUTER SCIENCE. - ISSN 1877-0509. - 200:(2022), pp. 689-698. [10.1016/j.procs.2022.01.267]

A system to improve the physical ergonomics in Human-Robot Collaboration

Marianna Ciccarelli
;
Alessandra Papetti;Cecilia Scoccia;Giacomo Menchi;Giacomo Palmieri;Michele Germani
2022-01-01

Abstract

In the industry 4.0 era, pursuing social sustainability also means implementing a synergic collaboration between workers and robots. Indeed, robot behavior does not affect only worker safety, but it also influences his health and comfort. In this context, an important topic to be enhanced is the operator's physical monitoring aimed at reducing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders. Some research studies deal with the improvement of the worker's posture during human-robot collaboration; however, non-intrusive methods applicable in real industrial scenarios are lacking. To this ending, this paper proposes a system to avoid uncomfortable and unsafe postures based on workers' anthropometric characteristics, posture monitoring by inertial and visual systems, task requirements, and a real-time risk assessment by standard methodology. The system allows the optimization of the robot behavior in order to improve worker's well-being. Finally, the virtual simulation of a real case study is presented. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
2022
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11566/308486
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