The project is carried out within the Accordo Attuativo between the Inail Regional Directorate for Puglia and the Bari Polytechnic Institute University: “Development and Dissemination of a low-cost software-tool based on Kinect ™ v2, for the automatic real time monitoring of exposure to postural risk”.

The purpose is to aid operators involved in the prevention of biomechanical overload diseases, in order to improve the ergonomics of workers in the industrial fields during the execution of their daily tasks.

The concept of biomechanical overload related diseases due to manual handling of loads and the relative risk assessment was introduced by Legislative Decree No. 81/2008.

According to the Sixth European Report on Working Conditions (Eurofound-2015), exposure to the risk of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (WRMDs) resulting from the intake of awkward postures is still very common. The lifting operations, the intake of postures and the repetitiveness of the movements represent some of the main causes of WRMDs.

The best policy, applicable to prevent such pathologies, consists in the assessment of exposure to postural risk factors in the workplace and in the adoption of appropriate corrective measures.

The ISO 11228-3: 2007 standard (E), expressly cited by the Legislative Decree 81/2008, foresees, as a first preventive step, the application of a simplified methodology in order to achieve a high-level screening aimed at identifying potential risky situations. These evaluation techniques are time consuming and require human experts to carry out the manual analysis of the postures, of the repetition frequency, and of the forces involved during the working cycle.

The project, by exploiting new low-cost technologies, aims at developing a software tool, the K2RULALite, for the semiautomatic assessment of the worker's ergonomic postural risk, able to reduce the cost and the time required to carry out the monitoring activities.