ERG-AI: enhancing occupational ergonomics with uncertainty-aware ML and LLM feedback

Abstract

Workers, especially those involved in jobs requiring extended standing or repetitive movements, often face significant health challenges due to Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs). To mitigate MSD risks, enhancing workplace ergonomics is vital, which includes forecasting long-term employee postures, educating workers about related occupational health risks, and offering relevant recommendations. However, research gaps remain, such as the lack of a sustainable AI/ML pipeline that combines sensor-based, uncertainty-aware posture prediction with large language models for natural language communication of occupational health risks and recommendations. We introduce ERG-AI, a machine learning pipeline designed to predict extended worker postures using data from multiple wearable sensors. Alongside providing posture prediction and uncertainty estimates, ERG-AI also provides personalized health risk assessments and recommendations by generating prompts based on its performance and prompting Large Language Model (LLM) APIs, like GPT-4, to obtain user-friendly output. We used the Digital Worker Goldicare dataset to assess ERG-AI, which includes data from 114 home care workers who wore five tri-axial accelerometers in various bodily positions for a cumulative 2913 hours. The evaluation focused on the quality of posture prediction under uncertainty, energy consumption and carbon footprint of ERG-AI and the effectiveness of personalized recommendations rendered in easy-to-understand language.