Muscle Fatigue Estimation in Repetitive Lifting Task Using Surface Electromyography-Based Analysis

Abstract

Background: Workers in industry often perform repetitive and monotonous tasks with light weights, resulting in low back disorders.

Management of Hand Screen Printing Workers Health Using Ergonomic Design Intervention

“…Even though the trend in technology invasion have sophisticated the textile industry, hand printing is still used to a large extended in developing countries like India, Bangladesh, China, and so on. Repetitive and monotonous tasks, even with light weights, result in local muscle fatigue, which is a severe problem in the workplace and can cause muscle injuries (Spyropoulos et al, 2015). Further, it has been reported that these kind of uncomfortable posture and repetitive monotone movement induces low back pain (LBP) and impacts the work performance.…”

“…Muscle fatigue is defined as decline of the maximal force muscles can generate or failure to maintain the required or expected force by neuromuscular system. Many methods are reported to determine muscle fatigue such as: (a) measuring the time duration, where one would be able to perform certain work like static (isometric) contraction, ergo-metrically imposed loading; (b) state of temporary lowered capacity to perform work of a certain intensity; (c) work-out or load that induce to reduce the maximal capacity to generate force or power output; (d) by determining the lactate concentration in a muscle based on blood samples; and (e) significant biochemical and physiological changes in muscles during fatigue can be detected by surface electromyography (sEMG) signal properties, as these changes are reflected by changes in myoelectric signals (Cifrek et al, 2009; Spyropoulos et al, 2015). In spite of all these technique, sEMG method is well accepted and reported to measure muscle fatigue due to its advantages, such as: (a) non-invasiveness; (b) applicability in situ; (c) real-time monitoring; and (d) ability to monitor fatigue of a particular muscle group.…”

A New Overloading Fatigue Model for Ergonomic Risk Assessment with Application to Human-Robot Collaboration

“…On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that significant biochemical and physiological changes in fatigued muscles can be detected by analysing surface electromyography (sEMG) signals [9], [10]. A large portion of these works has focused on quantifying muscle fatigue in isometric contractions, with the extension to dynamic cases only during the last decade [11], [12]. Nevertheless, the use of sEMG presents several drawbacks.…”

“…To our knowledge, there is little research carried out on the implementation of practical strategies to help preventing the accumulation of excessive fatigue, which are mostly based on work/rest schedules[11] or focused on specific applications[19].…”

Quantifying Muscle Fatigue of the Low Back during Repetitive Load Lifting Using Lyapunov Analysis

“…The main purpose was to identify a possible correlation between the divergence of the kinematic trajectories of the low back system and the different stages of fatigue in comparison with the corresponding Borg's scale measurements in order to detect the stage when the fatigue accumulation becomes substantial. In addition, we aimed to determine the Time to Substantial Fatigue Onset -TSFO [33]. This objective might be important in order to organize the work/ rest ratio of the particular task in the workplace.…”