SBIR Phase I: Feasibility of estimating musculoskeletal injury risk of material handling workers with novel wearable devices

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的广泛影响/商业潜力包括三个主要部分。首先是体力劳动者肌肉骨骼损伤的减少，这已经影响到每年60万工人。这将提高劳动者的生活质量，因为工伤既影响他们的工作生活，也影响他们的个人生活。其次是减少雇主需要支付的与这些伤害相关的高额费用，据估计，这些费用每年高达152亿美元。这些成本对这些公司的竞争力构成了挑战。再次，工伤影响员工士气，旷工，生产力损失和员工流失，这些都是对公司高效运行的挑战。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将研究使用智能可穿戴设备自动评估工作场所肌肉骨骼损伤风险的可行性。在美国，这些伤害每年影响数十万工人，并给美国公司造成超过150亿美元的直接成本。本研究目标取决于两个技术目标的实现(i)证明传感器和开发的算法可以区分起重事件与其他工人活动，以及（ii）证明传感器收集的数据可用于准确预测NIOSH起重方程的输出，NIOSH是工业中广泛接受的人体工程学风险模型。由我们的设备执行的方程输出的估计将与经过认证的人体工程学专家手动计算的结果进行比较。这些可穿戴设备可以随着时间的推移不断量化肌肉骨骼损伤的风险，从而更深入地了解影响风险的因素，并在伤害发生之前采取措施降低风险。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project consists of three major pieces. First is the reduction of musculoskeletal injuries for manual laborers, which already affects 600,000 workers each year. This will improve the quality of life of laborers, since an injury at work affects both their work life and their personal life. Second is to reduce the high costs associated to these injuries that need to be paid by employers, and which are estimated to be $15.2bn a year. These costs challenge the competitiveness of these companies. Thirdly, the worker injuries affect employee morale, absenteeism, productivity loss and employee turnover, all of which are challenges to the efficient running of a company.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will study the feasibility of automatically evaluating the risk of musculoskeletal injury in the workplace using smart wearable devices. These injuries affect hundreds of thousands of workers per year in the US, and cost US companies more than $15bn in direct costs. This research goal depends on the achievement of two technical objectives (i) to prove that the sensors and developed algorithms can differentiate lifting events from other worker activities, and (ii) to demonstrate that the data collected by the sensors can be used to accurately predict the output of the NIOSH lifting equation, an ergonomics risk model widely accepted in industry. Estimations of the outputs of the equation performed by our device will be compared by those computed manually by a certified ergonomist. These wearable devices can quantify the risk of musculoskeletal injuries continuously over time, providing a deeper understanding of the factors that affect risk and the ability to take measures to reduce that risk before an injury occurs.