# Ergonomic Design of a Workplace Using Virtual Reality and a Motion Capture Suit
###### Abstract
[21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28] review the current limitations of implementing computer vision reftechniques and suggest potential areas for future applications. The next step to assessing ergonomics in the workplace is using 3D modelling of the workplace and capturing the worker's movements using a motion capture suit, which is used by [29] or [30]. Other authors address traditional workplace ergonomics assessments, such as real-world measurements of workers, or the use of standardised questionnaires [14; 15; 31]. However, the assessment of working postures is not the only thing that a technologist in collaboration with an ergonomist should be concerned with. An integral part of workplace design is also the assessment of local muscle loading which is normally only assessed in the real workplace. Local muscle loading should be assessed in the pre-production phase, especially as unilateral and repetitive loading is one of the biggest risk factors for operators in production. This issue is addressed in [2; 5], whose research focuses on the effect of upper limb position on local muscle loading of the forearm. Nowadays, many larger companies (especially automotive and aerospace companies) are already using the possibility of linking virtual reality and motion capture and their real-time evaluation by means of motion capture (MoCap) in order to streamline pre-production phases in particular [32]. However, these activities are carried out intuitively and optimised on the basis of internal know-how. Ergonomic field validation in the context of a combination of VR and MoCap has several advantages (as outlined above). In particular, there is no need to build a physical prototype of the workplace or to test everything in live operation. MoCap has the benefit of being able to perform a high number of measurements in a short period of time, resulting in higher possibilities of optimising the ergonomic design of a (perhaps not yet existing) workplace. A complete description of the possibilities of using the MoCap system is described in more detail in [33], where the author describes, in particular, all the possibilities of using these systems. Defining the term virtual reality can be relatively subjective. The possibilities of describing virtual reality and its further use in ergonomics are described in [11; 34], where the authors describe the use of virtual reality for ergonomics. Among the general advantages of using VR applied here are the possibilities of standardising the environment, the easy replicability of the experiment, and the ease of performing and preserving the experiment record. So, the initial research question is this:  
* Can VR technology in combination with MoCap be used to implement ergonomic changes in working position with emphasis on upper limb loading in the assembly workplace? To answer this question, we will first set a method and a pilot validation study. We first need to set some constraints:
* The study will only look at use at assembly sites. * Some limitations may also result from the hardware and software selected for testing (see below). It is likely that neither of these constraints is a limiting factor, but this will not be the focus of this paper (but it will be dealt with in a follow-up paper). We need to select a representative workplace to describe the software used and developed for solving the research question.