At HumanTech, one of our main goals is to reduce workplace injuries by 30% in the construction industry. Our partners at SINTEF are building on the motion-capture technology developed by Sci-Track to improve construction workers’ safety and well-being and provide services for human-robot collaboration.

This technology can be used to both obtain information about the workers on a construction site and provide them with helpful information for executing their work. For example, it can predict whether a person is at risk of injury and inform them where they should or should not go to avoid it.

How does this technology work? How are we using it at HumanTech? We have spoken with our partner Markus Miezal, Researcher at Sci-Track, to better understand it.

 

Markus Miezal, Researcher at Sci-Track, is wearing a motion capture suit to show how this innovative technology works in real-time.

Q: Markus, can you explain to us what this technology is and how it works?

A: I’m wearing a suit from the Japanese company Xenoma, which includes 18 inertial measurement units. The sensors provide measurements of linear acceleration (including gravity), rotational velocity and a magnetic field measurement (i.e. a 3D compass). We all have such sensors in our smartphones, which can detect screen rotation, for example.

Our technology uses statistical sensor fusion based on a human biomechanical model to estimate the user’s kinematics from the measurements.

Q: How interesting! For what purpose are you developing it? And how will it contribute to HumanTech’s objectives?

A: We will use it to track construction workers and provide the kinematics to the exoskeleton from our partners at Tecnalia so that they can identify the user’s intention and control the exoskeleton accordingly.

Another option yet to be explored is to also use it in the delivery tasks of the bricklayer and the robot. We will integrate it with the Theta 360° camera from our partners at Ricoh to provide visual-inertial tracking of the human body.

“We will use this technology to track construction workers and provide the kinematics to the exoskeleton from our partners at Tecnalia so that they can identify the user’s intention and control the exoskeleton accordingly”.

Q: Who will be able to use it, and could you give us an example of a practical, real-life case where it could be used?

A: Due to the shortage of sensors on the market, we will only be able to create a few suits for HumanTech. Apart from the construction sector, our product has been used in rehabilitation and for the ergonomic analysis of factory workers. Motion capture is also a well-known application.

Q: What stage of development are you at, and what are your next steps?

A: We have a working product, but our extensions, in particular the integration of the camera, are planned for August. We are building on existing publications in this field and are currently working on the device calibration process.


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