  Musculoskeletal disorder (MSD) is one of the major health problems in
mechanical work especially in manual handling jobs. Muscle fatigue is believed
to be the main reason for MSD. Posture analysis techniques have been used to
expose MSD risks of the work, but most of the conventional methods are only
suitable for static posture analysis. Meanwhile the subjective influences from
the inspectors can result differences in the risk assessment. Another
disadvantage is that the evaluation has to be taken place in the workshop, so
it is impossible to avoid some design defects before data collection in the
field environment and it is time consuming. In order to enhance the efficiency
of ergonomic MSD risk evaluation and avoid subjective influences, we develop a
new muscle fatigue model and a new fatigue index to evaluate the human muscle
fatigue during manual handling jobs in this paper. Our new fatigue model is
closely related to the muscle load during working procedure so that it can be
used to evaluate the dynamic working process. This muscle fatigue model is
mathematically validated and it is to be further experimental validated and
integrated into a virtual working environment to evaluate the muscle fatigue
and predict the MSD risks quickly and objectively.

Robotics