[Paper Review] Development of an end-to-end hardware and software pipeline for affordable and feasible ergonomics assessment in the automotive industry

Javier González-Alonso, Cristina Simón-Martínez+4 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jan 24, 2026

Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation0 citations

TL;DR

This paper presents a modular end-to-end hardware-software pipeline for ergonomic assessment in automotive workplaces, using custom IMU sensors and open tools to rival gold-standard systems at lower cost.

ABSTRACT

An end-to-end hardware-software pipeline is introduced to automatize ergonomics assessment in industrial workplaces. The proposed modular solution can interoperate with commercial systems throughout the ergonomics assessment phases involved in the process. The pipeline includes custom-designed Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors, two real-time worker movement acquisition tools, inverse kinematics processing and Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) report generation. It is based on free tools such as Unity3D and OpenSim to avoid the problems derived from using proprietary technologies, such as security decisions being made under "black box" conditions. Experiments were conducted in an automotive factory in a workplace with WMSDs risk among workers. The proposed solution obtained comparable results to a gold standard solution, reaching measured joint angles a 0.95 cross-correlation and a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) lower than 10 for elbows and 12 for shoulders between both systems. In addition, the global RULA score difference is lower than 5% between both systems. This work provides a low-cost solution for WMSDs risk assessment in the workplace to reduce musculoskeletal disorders and associated sick leave in industry, impacting the health of workers in the long term. Our study can ease further research and popularize the use of wearable systems for ergonomics analysis allowing these workplace prevention systems to reach different industrial environments.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate affordable ergonomics assessment to reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders in industrial settings.
• Develop a modular hardware-software pipeline interoperable with existing systems across ergonomics assessment phases.
• Enable real-time movement acquisition, processing, and RULA reporting using accessible tools.
• Avoid black-box limitations by leveraging open-source platforms for security and transparency.

Proposed method

• Design and deploy custom inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors.
• Provide two real-time worker movement acquisition tools.
• Apply inverse kinematics processing to compute joint angles.
• Generate Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) reports.
• Utilize Unity3D and OpenSim to enable open, non-proprietary processing.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 Can a low-cost, open-source hardware-software pipeline achieve ergonomics assessment results comparable to gold-standard solutions?
• RQ2 What level of agreement (e.g., joint angle accuracy, RMSE) is achievable between the proposed system and traditional methods?
• RQ3 Is the pipeline scalable and interoperable with existing commercial ergonomics systems in industrial settings?
• RQ4 Can open-source tools provide transparent and secure ergonomics analytics without compromising accuracy?

Key findings

• Joint angles with the proposed system show a cross-correlation of 0.95 with the gold-standard system.
• RMSE for elbows is below 10 degrees and RMSE for shoulders is below 12 degrees.
• Global RULA score difference between the proposed system and the gold-standard is under 5%.
• The pipeline achieves comparable ergonomics assessment performance while remaining low-cost.
• Experiments conducted in an automotive factory with WMSDs risk demonstrate practical feasibility.