ROBOTIC ORTHOSIS BASED ON BEND SENSORS FOR OCCUPATIONAL MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDER PREVENTION

Abstract

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders are generated, preceded, or aggravated by repeated or continuous use of certain parts of the body. Orthoses have been developed to help people prevent or treat these kinds of disorders. In this paper, we developed a novel flexible orthosis based on bend sensors to count the times of the repetitive movements and remind the worker to take adequate rest after a period of repetitive movements, thus, to reduce the possibility of developing musculoskeletal disorders. A novel movement detection method is developed to count the times of the repeating movement by using the trends/slopes of the rotation angles. Experiments have been conducted to evaluate the accuracy of the novel movement detection method. The results demonstrate that the movement detection method can accurately count the times of the wrist movement with varying rotation angles and speed and issue reminders for rest.