A novel platform to enable the future human-centered factory.

This paper introduces a web-platform system that performs semi-automatic compute of several risk indexes, based on the considered evaluation method (e.g., RULA—Rapid Upper Limb Assessment, REBA—Rapid Entire Body Assessment, OCRA—OCcupational Repetitive Action) to support ergonomics risk estimation, and provides augmented analytics to proactively improve ergonomic risk monitoring based on the characteristics of workers (e.g., age, gender), working tasks, and environment. It implements a body detection system, marker-less and low cost, based on the use of RGB cameras, which exploits the open-source deep learning model CMU (Carnegie Mellon University), from the tf-pose-estimation project, assuring worker privacy and data protection, which has been already successfully assessed in standard laboratory conditions. The paper provides a full description of the proposed platform and reports the results of validation in a real industrial case study regarding a washing machine assembly line composed by 5 workstations. A total of 15 workers have been involved. Results suggest how the proposed system is able to significantly speed up the ergonomic assessment and to predict angles and perform a RULA and OCRA analysis, with an accuracy comparable to that obtainable from a manual analysis, even under the unpredictable conditions that can be found in a real working environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)