• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.93-99
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• 2015

Economic burden of work-related musculoskeletal disorder(WMDs) is increasing. Known causes of WMDs include improper posture, repetition, load, and temperature of workplace. Among them, improper postures play an important role. A smart sensor called SensorTag is employed to estimate the trunk postures including flexion-extension, lateral bend, and the trunk rotational speeds. Measuring gravitational acceleration vector in the smart sensor along the tri-orthogonal axes offers an orientation of the object with the smart sensor attached to. The smart sensor is light in weight and has small form factor, making it an ideal wearable sensor for body posture measurement. Measured data from the smart senor is wirelessly transferred for analysis to a smartphone which has enough computing power, data storage and internet-connectivity, removing need for additional hardware for data post-processing. Based on the estimated body postures, WMDs risks can be conviently gauged by using existing WMDs risk assesment methods such as OWAS, RULA, REBA, etc.