The International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction
Publications / 2018 Proceedings of the 35th ISARC, Berlin, Germany
Reassigning Construction Laborers Based on Body Motion Analysis
Construction laborers perform multiple labor intensive and physically demanding tasks, which exposes them to the risk of work related musculoskeletal disorders. When construction laborers sustain these injuries, they are typically reassigned to other tasks. The body motion involved in carrying out the assigned task should have limited use of the affected body part(s). This has implications on the productivity and health of a reassigned laborer. Traditional approach to reassigning laborers are subjective and ignores the effect of the tasks on the affected body part. To address this limitation, an ergonomic analysis framework is proposed to quantify the risk factors associated with body parts during the execution of construction tasks, so as to enable the reassignment of construction laborers to tasks that will impose the least strain on the affected body part. Preliminary results are provided to demonstrate feasibility.