Towards a wearable sensor system for continuous occupational cold stress assessment

Abstract

This study investigated the usefulness of continuous sensor data for improving occupational cold stress assessment. Eleven volunteer male subjects completed a 90–120-min protocol in cold environments, consisting of rest, moderate and hard work. Biomedical data were measured using a smart jacket with integrated temperature, humidity and activity sensors, in addition to a custom-made sensor belt worn around the chest. Other relevant sensor data were measured using commercially available sensors. The study aimed to improve decision support for workers in cold climates, by taking advantage of the information provided by data from the rapidly growing market of wearable sensors. Important findings were that the subjective thermal sensation did not correspond to the measured absolute skin temperature and that large differences were observed in both metabolic energy production and skin temperatures under identical exposure conditions. Temperature, humidity, activity and heart rate were found to be relevant parameters for cold stress assessment, and the locations of the sensors in the prototype jacket were adequate. The study reveals the need for cold stress assessment and indicates that a generalised approached is not sufficient to assess the stress on an individual level.

Motion Capture Technology in Industrial Applications: A Systematic Review

“…Workers’ health and safety was found to be the most prolific research area. Even though wearable sensors are widely used in clinical settings for the remote monitoring of physiological parameters (e.g., heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, VO2), only a single study [ 26 ] has employed multiple sensors for the measurement of such metrics in industrial scenarios. This can be attributed to the industries involved being interested in the prevention of work-related incidents that can lead to absence from work, rather than in the normative function of the workers’ body.…”

“…When MoCap systems were combined with EMG sensors ( Table 8 ), the musculoskeletal and postural evaluation of workers during generic physical activities ( Table 5 ) was improved [ 29 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 54 , 57 ]. Inertial sensors also showed good results for the identification of hazardous events such as trips and falls in the construction industry [ 44 , 58 , 60 , 65 , 66 , 69 , 75 ], but the positions and numbers of the used IMUs were reported to impact on the intra-subject activity identification [ 26 ]. For example, fewer IMUs placed on specific anatomical sections (e.g., hip and neck) showed similar task classification performance than a greater number of IMUs distributed on the entire body [ 36 ].…”

“…This topic was also the focus of interest for more than 10% of the studies in the past years ( Table 6 ). However, when the assessment involved the identification or classification of tasks [ 26 ], secondary sensors were frequently needed in addition to the IMUs (force cells, temperature sensors, etc.).…”

The state of wearable health technologies: a transdisciplinary literature review

“…Mental health. In the early stages, skin conductance (Setz et al, 2010) was utilized in mental health studies; then signals such as heart rate and respiration (Choi et al, 2012); motion, voice, location, sound and light level (Mohiuddin et al, 2013); infrared signals (Masumoto et al, 2017); augmented reality (Keshav et al, 2017); and humidity and temperature (Austad et al, 2018) were added. The timeline (Figure 6) shows that physical signals were utilized more in earlier years; ecological signals were subsequently added.…”

Is There a Need to Integrate Human Thermal Models with Weather Forecasts to Predict Thermal Stress?

“…In a field study it was noted that the provided work clothing was not insulated enough, some workers also removed their gloves to perform fine tasks [10]. Austad et al (2018) concluded the need of a decision-support system based on individual data to support cold stress protection [53].…”