Kinect Validation of Ergonomics in Human Pick and Place Activities Through Lateral Automatic Posture Detection

In this paper we evaluate a system based on the Microsoft Kinect™ sensor, aimed at the automatic detection of risk postures during human work activities. We first introduce a pick and place task, where three different lateral standing subjects move light cardboard boxes from the various levels of a bookcase to its top, and then putting them back to their original places. They repeat the task over several work cycles and we capture all their natural movements in a continuous way using Kinect, storing the joint positions and the color images. Secondly, from the joint positions, our system detects specific risk postures following the definitions of the Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) method. Finally, we compare the posture detections by our system with the baseline detections made by a panel of five experts who used the captured color images. In our study we find that the experts have problems to distinguish among some RULA postures during a work cycle because of the narrow detection margin and the difficulty to perceive if a limb reached a certain position; which is particularly true for the cases of wrist and neck. This leads to a larger false positive rate and to a lower general accuracy, with our system detecting postures that experts do not. After applying a ±1° of relaxation to our system, which in negligible for human perception, we are able to reach an accuracy of 0.93 in the comparison with the baseline. Our results show the suitability of Kinect for lateral risk posture detection in pick and place activities.