Wearable Devices for Ergonomics: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Wearable devices are pervasive solutions for increasing work efficiency, improving workers’ well-being, and creating interactions between users and the environment anytime and anywhere. Although several studies on their use in various fields have been performed, there are no systematic reviews on their utilisation in ergonomics. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review to identify wearable devices proposed in the scientific literature for ergonomic purposes and analyse how they can support the improvement of ergonomic conditions. Twenty-eight papers were retrieved and analysed thanks to eleven comparison dimensions related to ergonomic factors, purposes, and criteria, populations, application and validation. The majority of the available devices are sensor systems composed of different types and numbers of sensors located in diverse body parts. These solutions also represent the technology most frequently employed for monitoring and reducing the risk of awkward postures. In addition, smartwatches, body-mounted smartphones, insole pressure systems, and vibrotactile feedback interfaces have been developed for evaluating and/or controlling physical loads or postures. The main results and the defined framework of analysis provide an overview of the state of the art of smart wearables in ergonomics, support the selection of the most suitable ones in industrial and non-industrial settings, and suggest future research directions.

Wearable Devices for Environmental Monitoring in the Built Environment: A Systematic Review

“…This aspect could probably be explored more deeply in the near future, in a human-centric approach. As mentioned in introduction, wearables have also been used to acquire data and assess physical ergonomic risk factors, particularly on unfavourable postures as reported in [ 13 ] where it was focused on the design principles of wearables from an ergonomic perspective as one of the main future directions that this type of device could address.…”

“…While there are different practical experiences with the use of wearables for ergonomics [ 13 ] or health monitoring [ 14 , 15 ] and workers’ safety [ 16 ], few researchers have investigated the impact of IoT-based infrastructure in environmental monitoring in the last decades. In [ 17 ], the authors systematise knowledge in the field of industrial wearables’ safety to assess the relevance of their use in enterprises as the technology maintaining occupational safety, to correlate the benefits and costs of their implementation, and, to outline promising directions for future work in this area.…”

The WGD—A Dataset of Assembly Line Working Gestures for Ergonomic Analysis and Work-Related Injuries Prevention

“…The information contained in the WGD were collected from healthy participants with a highly structured setup and with gold standard motion capture devices since we wanted to retrieve data with low measurement errors in order to build up the WGD. When monitoring real workers in their working environment, also other motion analysis systems (such as wearable [30] or visual [31] sensors) can be adopted. Since the database is made of kinematic information, comparisons can be easily made among motion captured data with the reference values proposed in the dataset.…”

Recent Advances in Multidimensional (1D, 2D, and 3D) Composite Sensors Derived from MXene: Synthesis, Structure, Application, and Perspective

“…On the present overall view, the key issue focuses on how to realize ideal sensors compatible with high sensitivity, wide detection range, ultralow response time, ultralow detection limitation, superb linearity, and cyclic stability. [ 51–60 ]…”

“…On the present overall view, the key issue focuses on how to realize ideal sensors compatible with high sensitivity, wide detection range, ultralow response time, ultralow detection limitation, superb linearity, and cyclic stability. [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60] What is noteworthy is that conductive materials interacting with other substances have been considered as an extremely efficient strategy to realize high sensing performance, being able to give out fast response reacting to outer tiny changes. Currently, aiming to endow sensors superb sensitivity and wide sensing range, flexible substrates for sensors commonly choose polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), hydrogenated styrene-butadiene block copolymer (SEBS), and silicone rubber and other high elastic polymer materials.…”