Abstract
The purpose of this study is to measure a perceived joint discomfort in the seated and standing position, and to provide ranking systems of perceived joint discomfort. Nineteen mole subjects with no history of musculo-skeletal disorders participated in the experiment. Their physical characteristics were: age $-25.4{\pm}2.7$years, stature $-171.9{\pm}6.0cm$, and body weight $-67.1{\pm}7.0kg$. The results showed that the perceived joint discomforts were different depending upon the joints involved in motion and their movement directions (degree of freedom of motions), which implied that the human body motions and their degrees of freedom should be classified into several distinct classes that need to be assigned different weights of postural stress. Therefore, three ranking systems based on the perceived joint discomforts were suggested, which were classified by the degree of freedom of motions and joints, by only degree of freedom motions, and by joints involved in motion, respectively. In the seated position, the hip movement was the most stressful, the bock was the second, and the shoulder was the third. Likewise, in the standing postures, the hip was the most, the bock was the second, and the ankle was the third. It was expected that these joint motion ranking systems could be used by practitioners of health and safety to improve the comfort of working postures in industry.