Evaluation of vibrant muscles over the shoulder region among workers of the hand screen printing industry

Biomechanical Assessments of the Upper Limb for Determining Fatigue, Strain and Effort from the Laboratory to the Industrial Working Place: A Systematic Review

Recent human-centered developments in the industrial field (Industry 5.0) lead companies and stakeholders to ensure the wellbeing of their workers with assessments of upper limb performance in the workplace, with the aim of reducing work-related diseases and improving awareness of the physical status of workers, by assessing motor performance, fatigue, strain and effort. Such approaches are usually developed in laboratories and only at times they are translated to on-field applications; few studies summarized common practices for the assessments. Therefore, our aim is to review the current state-of-the-art approaches used for the assessment of fatigue, strain and effort in working scenarios and to analyze in detail the differences between studies that take place in the laboratory and in the workplace, in order to give insights on future trends and directions. A systematic review of the studies aimed at evaluating the motor performance, fatigue, strain and effort of the upper limb targeting working scenarios is presented. A total of 1375 articles were found in scientific databases and 288 were analyzed. About half of the scientific articles are focused on laboratory pilot studies investigating effort and fatigue in laboratories, while the other half are set in working places. Our results showed that assessing upper limb biomechanics is quite common in the field, but it is mostly performed with instrumental assessments in laboratory studies, while questionnaires and scales are preferred in working places. Future directions may be oriented towards multi-domain approaches able to exploit the potential of combined analyses, exploitation of instrumental approaches in workplace, targeting a wider range of people and implementing more structured trials to translate pilot studies to real practice.

Impact of digital boards on hand and neck muscle activity during online teaching process

Academicians across the globe due to Covid 19 shifted to online teaching as a mainstream method by replacing the chalk and talk method. The main objective of this study is to find the impact of different sizes of digital boards used for online teaching on muscle activity and muscle fatigue, and then results are compared with conventional writing. Initially, a questionnaire survey is conducted among 100 college professors about the issue they faced while using online teaching methods. Experimental analysis are then conducted using electromyography sensor (sEMG) among ten college professors and their muscle activity on the dominant hand and neck while writing on two commercially available digital boards namely Type 1 (small writing area) and Type 2 (large writing area). Four muscles namely Flexor carpi radialis, Extensor carpi radialis, Biceps brachii, and Sternocleidomastoid (SCM) are chosen for the study. The results are then compared with muscle activity while writing on conventional A4 sheets. Normalized root mean square (RMS) is used to assess the muscle activity and the trend line of MPF value is utilized to assess the muscle fatigue. The results show that SCM muscle has more muscle activation compared to other selected muscles followed by flexor carpi radialis. Subjective analysis is carried out using the Borg scale, which has reported that Type 2 digital board having larger working area was preferred by the participants as it reduces muscle fatigue.