Accuracy and repeatability of an inertial measurement unit system for field-based occupational studies
Open accessAbstract
The accuracy and repeatability of an inertial measurement unit (IMU) system for directly measuring trunk angular displacement and upper arm elevation were evaluated over eight hours (i) in comparison to a gold standard, optical motion capture (OMC) system in a laboratory setting, and (ii) during a field-based assessment of dairy parlour work. Sample-to-sample root mean square differences between the IMU and OMC system ranged from 4.1° to 6.6° for the trunk and 7.2°-12.1° for the upper arm depending on the processing method. Estimates of mean angular displacement and angular displacement variation (difference between the 90th and 10th percentiles of angular displacement) were observed to change <4.5° on average in the laboratory and <1.5° on average in the field per eight hours of data collection. Results suggest the IMU system may serve as an acceptable instrument for directly measuring trunk and upper arm postures in field-based occupational exposure assessment studies with long sampling durations. Practitioner Summary: Few studies have evaluated inertial measurement unit (IMU) systems in the field or over long sampling durations. Results of this study indicate that the IMU system evaluated has reasonably good accuracy and repeatability for use in a field setting over a long sampling duration.
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Pelvis RMSE and correlation coefficients varied from 0.4 to 8.8° and 0.84 to 1.00, showing good to excellent validity.
“RMSE and correlation coefficients varied respectively from 0.4 to 8.8° and 0.84 to 1.00, showing good to excellent validity [30,36,38,41,42,52].”
From Validity and Reliability of Wearable Sensors for Joint Angle Estimation: A Systematic Review (2019) · cites this paper as [38]
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References 73 · Cited by 96
- Authors
- Schall, M. C., Fethke, N. B., Chen, H., Oyama, S., & Douphrate, D. I.
- Affiliations
- Auburn University (US)
- University of Iowa (US)
- The University of Texas at San Antonio (US)
- ,
- Corresponding author
- Schall, Mark C.
- Venue
- Ergonomics
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2015-10-07
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 591-602
- ISSN
- 0014-0139 (ISSN-L)
- 1366-5847
- PMC
- PMC9469634
- OpenAlex
- W1918408772
- Cited by
- 96
- References
- 73
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 16.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Ergonomics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (2U54OH008085-08, 5T42OH008491-08, 5U54OH007548-13A)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Ergonomics and Musculoskeletal Disorders
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Occupational Health and Safety in Workplaces
- Keywords
- inertial measurement unit, measurement accuracy, repeatability, occupational exposure assessment, optical motion capture comparison
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Arm, Biomechanical Phenomena, Dairying, Humans, Ergonomics, Male, Movement, Posture, Reproducibility of Results, Occupational Exposure, Young Adult, Torso
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