Towards Real-time Ergonomics Feedback and Educational Content with the use of Co-Robots

Engineering students will play a major role in the process of improving the ergonomics in the workplace. Nonetheless, studies indicate that engineering students are not familiar with the Human Factors & Ergonomics (HF&E) methods used to improve these systems. Therefore, more emphasis should be given to advance HF&E education. However, in this pursuit hands-on activities that promote active learning need to be encouraged in order to maintain students' satisfaction and motivation. Moreover, the initial results from the case study presented in this work indicate that students' HF&E knowledge needs to be improved, and that they frequently use improper lifting techniques. In light of this, the recent advancements in technology, that could potentially allow a Co-robot system to provide real-time ergonomic feedback and HF&E educational content to students, are explored. Such a system has the potential to help students better understand and experience firsthand how HF&E can be applied to improve the workplace. Even though the method proposed is in its initial design stages, its capabilities are promising and future work will focus on implementing the system in engineering lab environments.