Papers for

ergonomics specialists

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Monocular camera tracks wrist movements using passive markers and anchors

MonoEgo: Monocular Metric Egocentric Demonstration Capture with Passive Wrist Constellations and Sparse Workstation Anchors

Abstract: Image-aligned metric demonstrations often require dedicated tracking hardware and synchronization across devices. We present MonoEgo, a capture system that replaces active wrist instrumentation with offline monocular reconstruction. One 90-FPS global-shutter camera observes calibrated passive wrist constellations, sparse workstation anchors, and the scene on a shared image clock. MonoTag SLAM combines marker corners with ORB geometry and uses visual evidence to reject ambiguous planar-marker poses. Its metric Atlas supports interval scale re-anchoring, verified map merging, and retrospective localization of earlier frames supported by the final map. Camera and wrist-constellation outputs retain validity and map provenance, and unsupported motion is left missing. Experiments show metric tracking beyond continuous anchor visibility, reconnection of supported map components, and recovery of some missing camera poses. Comparisons against a multisensor camera reference and separate stationary-constellation tests characterize trajectory agreement and precision while revealing incomplete coverage and residual geometric uncertainty. The results indicate that passive fixtures and offline reconstruction can reduce capture-side requirements. Dynamic accuracy, deployment, and downstream policy benefits require further study.

Mon 28 SeptRobotics
The gist
Tracking hand and wrist movements usually needs special devices and synced cameras. The authors developed MonoEgo, a system that uses one regular camera to watch passive markers on the wrist and some fixed points in the workspace. Their method reconstructs hand motion accurately without needing active sensors, even when some fixed points are out of sight. This approach lowers the complexity and hardware needed for capturing hand demonstrations. However, more tests are needed to understand how well it works dynamically and in real use.
Open → 2609.34512v1

Multimodal system tracks workload in human robot physical interactions

Online Multimodal Workload Assessment in Contact-Rich Physical Human-Robot Interaction

Abstract: Contact-rich physical human--robot interaction (pHRI) imposes time-varying demands associated with physical interaction, motor regulation, and physiological response, motivating continuous assessment of interaction workload. This paper presents an online multimodal assessment framework that integrates interaction wrench, planar tool-center-point (TCP) kinematics, and skin conductance level (SCL) into four interpretable workload-related factors. Their relative contributions are adjusted using path curvature to reflect changes in motion demand and task progression to account for gradual physiological variation over time. The framework was evaluated with 24 participants across 18 controlled combinations of temperature, acoustic noise, and illuminance under two admittance-control modes. Strict leave-one-subject-out (LOSO) evaluation used standardized pupil diameter ($\mathrm{PD}_z$) as an independent physiological reference and included comparisons with static variants and representative state-of-the-art learning-based baselines. The proposed framework achieves a cohort-mean $30\,\mathrm{s}$ block-wise Spearman correlation of $ρ_{30}=0.308$ with the physiological reference, with positive subject-level correspondence in 23 of 24 participants. Its overall performance is comparable to the state-of-the-art learning-based baseline. At the same time, our framework keeps the assessment process transparent through explicit workload-related factors and defined weighting rules, while outperforming the corresponding fixed-weight formulation. The framework also maintains consistent performance across the two tested admittance-control modes. These results support a transparent and interpretable approach to continuous interaction workload assessment in contact-rich pHRI.

Wed 16 SeptRobotics
The gist
Physical work between humans and robots often changes how hard someone is working. The authors created a system that looks at forces, movement, and skin responses to guess how demanding the task feels in real time. They tested this on people doing different tasks in different conditions and showed it matches well with eye pupil size, a known stress indicator. Their method is clear and understandable compared to complex AI models, making it easier to trust and use.
Open → 2609.18031v1