Abstract
Prolonged sitting is an aggravating factor in low back and neck pain. Increased use of computers at workplaces could therefore cause health risks. This paper evaluates the application of the Microsoft Kinect in order to in-vestigate the ergonomics at the place of employment. The Kinect is a cheap device and commercially available which enables the user to record 3D data of the human body. Within this paper, guidelines for the ’ideal’ placement of the Kinect are provided in order to enhance the robustness of the skeleton recog-nition algorithm. An evaluation of 35 sequences (7 different positions in com-bination with 5 different sitting postures) showed that placing the Kinect sen-sor slantingly forward at an angle of 20° (in front of the subject) the joint rec-ognition rate achieved 89.62%. According to these results, the device should be positioned between 20° to 45° in order to robustly track a sitting person.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
McCrady, S., Levine, J.: Sedentariness at work; how much do we really sit? Obesity 17(11), 2103–2105 (2010)
Zemp, R., Taylor, W.R., Lorenzetti, S.: In vivo spinal posture during upright and reclined sitting in an office chair. BioMed Research International (2013)
O’Sullivan, K., O’Sullivan, P., O’Sullivan, L., Dankaerts, W.: What do physiotherapists consider to be the best sitting spinal posture? Manual Therapy 17(5), 432–437 (2012)
Caneiro, J.P., O’Sullivan, P., Burnett, A., Barach, A., O’Neil, D., Tveit, O., Olafsdottir, K.: The influence of different sitting postures on head/neck posture and muscle activity. Manual Therapy 15(1), 54–60 (2010)
O’Sullivan, K., O’Dea, P., Dankaerts, W., O’Sullivan, P., Clifford, A., O’Sullivan, L.: Neutral lumbar spine sitting posture in pain-free subjects. Manual Therapy 15(6), 557–561 (2010)
Diego-Mas, J.A., Alcaide-Marzal, J.: Using Kinect sensor in observational methods for assessing postures at work. Applied Ergonomics 45(4), 976–985 (2014)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wiedemann, L.G., Planinc, R., Kampel, M. (2014). Ergonomic-Monitoring of Office Workplaces Using Kinect. In: Pecchia, L., Chen, L.L., Nugent, C., Bravo, J. (eds) Ambient Assisted Living and Daily Activities. IWAAL 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8868. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13105-4_40
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13105-4_40
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13104-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13105-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)