Automated Postural Angle Classification Using Microsoft Kinect For Ergonomics Assessment

Musculoskeletal injury is a common cause in manual material handling activities, where workers are exposed to repetitive picking and placing of materials, that therefore may lead to dangerous injuries if incorrect postures are made. It is the duty of factories to take care of the health conditions of their employees, and ensure the workplace is ergonomically designed. However, it is a difficult task to assess the work postures in a large number of employees all the time due to cost, lack of equipment, and lack of experience. The aim of this study is to formulate an ergonomic model to identify and classify body part motion angle ranges for upper limb postural analysis, to develop an automated real-time upper limb postural angle and classification system, and to evaluate the developed postural angle classification system using 30 participants in a lab setting and five ergonomic experts opinions. The chosen experts are individuals with experiences in ergonomics field working as academic researchers, consultancy agents, and industry management positions in Malaysia. Formulating the postural classification model applied the concepts of traffic light to categorise the work postures, where upper limb postures were classified into three classifications with mathematical models to count the number and percentage of each classification occurrence for each posture. The postural classification model was then integrated with a developed C# based software and a Microsoft Kinect sensor using heuristic approaches to do an automated real-time upper limb postural angle classification system. The developed postural classification was validated for 12 static postures, and 4 dynamic postures among 30 participants in a lab setting using Jamar goniometer (Sammons Preston Roylan, USA), a computerised protractor tool in ErgoFellow v3.0, and the statistical analysis used the root mean square error (RMSE). The evaluation was further explored by taking the ergonomic experts’ opinions through semi-structured interviews to note the needful, usefulness, applicability, effectiveness, and the details provided for the workplace. The results of validation revealed that the static postures was 7.52 RMSE, dynamic postures was 21.93 RMSE, and combined static and dynamic results was 14.48 RMSE. The study shows better mean RMSE results than Plantard et al. (2017) study by 15.6% in static phase analysis, but larger mean RMSE in dynamic analysis which might be due to the method of capturing the reference angles. The study concluded that despite the acceptable RMSE results presented by the developed system, the software architecture and detection techniques require further improvement and development for better angle measurement accuracy with added parameters for ergonomics assessment

A Review On Tribological Wear Test Rigs For Various Applications

To mimic a tribosystem setup to the real-time model while taking into consideration the subject of green tribology, many tribological wear test rigs are invented. The current work is a dedicated review on the latest development of various tribological wear test rigs build for numerous applications. With the aid of diagrams, the working principles of the machines which are built on specific standards are discussed. Their operating parameters associated with related research using these machines are also included. In addition to that, recommendations and directions for improvements in tribology machines are reported

The Effect of Polypropylene Fibers on the Fracture Characteristics of Lightweight Aggregate Crumb Rubber Concrete Composites

The increasing use of rubber tires and their low recycling ratio have made them a serious environmental problem. This work aims to develop and investigate enhanced lightweight aggregate crumb rubber concrete (PFLWACRC) composites regarding the fracture properties of concrete. Polypropylene (PP) fibers are commonly familiar with increased crack growth endurance of concrete. On the other hand, the reuse of waste rubber in concrete plays a major role in the mitigation of the effects of climate change. Various concrete mixtures were designed with conventional Portland cement and common lightweight coarse aggregates. The variables considered in this study are PP fibers in different percentages (0.2%, 0.4%, and 0.6% volume fraction), and crumb rubber with various substitution proportions (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, and 25% of fine aggregates). Cement with 450kg/m3 density with 10% silica fume was used. The fracture characteristics, which involve fracture toughness (KIC) and fracture energy generation (GF), of all concrete mixtures were evaluated by testing two types of samples, i.e. 54 notched concrete beams with dimensions of 10×10×52cm and 54 cylinders with diameter×height equal to 15×30cm. The results showed that the fracture toughness generation addresses the energy scattering limit of concrete mixtures. The findings showed that the existence of PP fibers increased the fracture energy and critical Crack Mouth Opening Displacement (CMOD)c. The PP fibers had a limited effect on the compressive strength and may even reduce it, but a remarkable enhancement of the energy absorption was observed

Usability Study of Integrated RULA-KinectTM System for Work Posture Assessment

A good work posture is one of vital contributors to occupational health and to increase the efficiency of industrial workers. Recently, numerous research works have developed an Integrated RULA- KinectTM system for work posture assessment; however, usability of the developed system remains unknown. The objective of this study was to develop a prototype of Integrated RULA-KinectTM system. Additionally, this study performed usability testing on the Integrated RULA- KinectTM system and RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet to determine feedbacks and reactions from the potential users. A focus group session was conducted among eight potential users, which divided into 2 groups (novice and expert). The results of the focus group session revealed that both novice and expert users agreed that the Integrated RULA-KinectTM system is easy to use compared to RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet. This study concluded that the Integrated RULA-KinectTM system is able to counter some limitations of the RULA Employee Assessment Worksheet

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Abstract Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Enhancing unsupervised video-based vehicle tracking and modeling for traffic data collection

Video-based traffic analysis is a leading technology for streamlining transportation data collection. With traffic records from video cameras, unsupervised automated video analysis can detect various vehicle measures such as vehicle spatial coordinates and subsequently lane positions, speed, and other dynamic measures without the need of any physical interconnections to the road infrastructure. This paper contributes to the unsupervised automated video analysis by addressing two main shortcomings of the approach. The first objective is to alleviate tracking problems of over-segmentation and over-grouping by integrating region-based detection with feature-based tracking. This information, when combined with spatiotemporal constraints of grouping, can reduce the effects of these problems. This fusion approach offers a superior decision procedure for grouping objects and discriminating between trajectories of objects. The second objective is to model three-dimensional bounding boxes for the vehicles, leading to a better estimate of their geometry and consequently accurate measures of their position and travel information. This improvement leads to more precise measurement of traffic parameters such as average speed, gap time, and headway. The paper describes the various steps of the proposed improvements. It evaluates the effectiveness of the refinement process on data collected from traffic cameras in three different locations in Canada and validates the results with ground truth data. It illustrates the effectiveness of the improved unsupervised automated video analysis with a case study on 10 h of traffic data collection such as volume and headway measurements.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author

An advanced real time energy management system for microgrids

International audienceThis paper presents an advanced Real-Time Energy Management System (RT-EMS) for Microgrid (MG) systems. The proposed strategy of RT-EMS capitalizes on the power of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) to minimize the energy cost and carbon dioxide emissions while maximizing the power of the available renewable energy resources. MATLAB-dSPACE Real-Time Interface Libraries (MLIB/MTRACE) are used as new tools to run the optimization code in Real-Time Operation (RTO). The communication system is developed based on ZigBee communication network which is designed to work in harsh radio environment where the control system is developed based on Advanced Lead-Lag Compensator (ALLC) which its parameters are tuned online to achieve fast convergence and good tracking response. The proposed RT-EMS along with its control and communication systems is experimentally tested to validate the results obtained from the optimization algorithm in a real MG testbed. The simulation and experimental results using real-world data highlight the effectiveness of the proposed RT-EMS for MGs applications

Dye-sensitized solar cells based on polyaniline-single waller carbon nanotubes composite,”

This work presented the successful fabrication of dye-sensitized solar cell using polyaniline base (EB), multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), organic dye (rhodamine B or riboflavin), zinc oxide (ZnO), and indium tin oxide (ITO). The electrical properties of the resultant devices were investigated by measuring the current density voltage (J-V), capacitance voltage (C-V), and impedance measurements under both dark and illuminated conditions. The photovoltaic cell characteristics, that is, open circuit voltage ( oc ), short circuit current density ( sc ), and energy conversion efficiency ( ), were evaluated under illumination and were found to be 0.48 mA/cm 2 , 400 mV, and 0.224%, respectively, for ITO/EB-MWCNTs/ZnO-rhodamine B/ITO heterostructure. Using impedance spectra, it was found that the series resistances of this type of solar cell are 62 and 60 Ω under darkness and illumination, respectively