A new approach to muscle fatigue evaluation for Push/Pull task

Ruina Ma (1) , Damien Chablat (1) , Fouad Bennis (1)

1 IRCCyN - Institut de Recherche en Communications et en Cybernétique de Nantes

Pushing/Pulling tasks is an important part of work in many industries. Usually, most researchers study the Push/Pull tasks by analyzing different posture conditions, force requirements, velocity factors, etc. However few studies have reported the effects of fatigue. Fatigue caused by physical loading is one of the main reasons responsible for MusculoSkeletal Disorders (MSD). In this paper, muscle groups of articulation is considered and from joint level a new approach is proposed for muscle fatigue evaluation in the arms Push/Pull operations. The objective of this work is to predict the muscle fatigue situation in the Push/Pull tasks in order to reduce the probability of MSD problems for workers. A case study is presented to use this new approach for analyzing arm fatigue in Pushing/Pulling.

Mots clés: Muscle model; push and pull activities; MSD; Arm simulation

Domaines: Robotique [cs.RO]

Ruina Ma, Damien Chablat, Fouad Bennis. A new approach to muscle fatigue evaluation for Push/Pull task. Romansy 19 – Robot Design, Dynamics and Control. CISM International Centre for Mechanical Sciences, Springer, Vienna, pp.309-316, 2012, 978-3-7091-1378-3. ⟨hal-00705172⟩