Seated Tracking for Correcting Computer Work Postures

Office desks are designed using anthropometric profiles for complying with ergonomics standards, where the elements are placed and distributed at comfortable and healthy configurations. Occupational health problems related to musculoskeletal affections is a common cause when working in sedentary and repetitive tasks, this problem is recognized by the World Health Organization and even though, surveys and workspace monitoring are tools for accompanying workers and detect failures and propose improvements, these results may yield to subjective information because every person has different levels of pain tolerance as well as anatomic characteristics that change our perception of comfort. Thanks to the advancements in image processing, a depth camera such as the Kinect sensor allows tracking facial points and capturing position and orientation data. In this work a tool for detecting posture variation of a seated person in front of a computer was implemented with the goal of monitoring when it deviates from its correct position. The system displays an alert and suggests a correction to the workers, however tolerances played an important role, as restrictive conditions resulted in continuous alerts and discomfort on the user.