Towards a real-world application of wearable sensors for musculoskeletal disorders prevention: the iFeel Wired Suit

Prevention for musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) in workers is one of the main directions to follow in order to reduce the socio-economical impact of these conditions. To effectively monitor and help the worker to reduce the associated risk, there is a need for acceptable technologies that can be integrated seamlessly into a given work environment. The iFeel Wired Suit represents a first step toward the application of wearable sensors in a real-world scenario. Featuring 10 IMU-based smart sensors, and a pair of sensorized shoes, it can estimate both the kinematic and the dynamic of the wearer. In this paper, we show how the kinematic estimation of the iFeel Wired Suit (made by a custom data processing pipeline) performs compared to a more invasive motion-tracking system.