A comparative study of ergonomics measurement in virtual and real environment

old_uid9604
titleA comparative study of ergonomics measurement in virtual and real environment
start_date2011/02/03
schedule14h30
onlineno
location_infosalle 018
summaryMusculoskeletal disorder (MSD) is one of the most serious occupational injuries in industrialized countries. Recent studies indicate that MSD is closely related to inappropriate design of products and works, which cause overexertion, long exposure of fatigue and discomfort, etc. How to prevent MSD have become an important content of ergonomics research, and some evaluation methods have been developed to assess ergonomics considerations of product and work design (i.e. find out and revise potential ergonomics flaws). Traditional evaluation methods usually require building physical mock-up for assessment, which is costly and time-consuming. Recent virtual reality technology development makes it possible to assess ergonomics considerations with a virtual mock-up. However, it is always important to know how closely the evaluation results with a virtual mock-up are compared with the results with a physical mock-up. It is also important to know how multimodal feedbacks affect on evaluation results with a virtual mock-up. In this presentation, a typical manual assembly operation (simplified from a drilling or riveting operation) is used in two experiments to answer the two questions. In the first experiment, 32 male subjects were recruited from a manufacturing enterprise. Three within- subject factors, including working posture, duration of tasks, size of target points, were involved in the experiment design. Six ergonomics indices, including posture (elbow angle), body part discomfort (BPD), task completion time (TCT), fatigue (maximum force capacity reduction), rating perceiving exertion (RPE), were measured as evaluation results in the experiment. Experimental results indicate that all results obtained with virtual mock-up are significantly higher than ones with physical mock-up, which means that subjects experienced more discomfort, required longer task completion time, paid more effort, fatigue grew faster with virtual mock-up.
responsiblesBrière