OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY FOR WORKERS IN INDUSTRY 4.0 AND WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY: TIM AND SANT’ANNA SCHOOL PRESENT THE RESEARCH PROJECT “SMOOTI”
The “open innovation” technology transfer paradigm for which universities today are collaborating with industry generating ventures and start-up companies also gives a significant contribution to keeping the workplace safe and healthy especially for the workers using the new technologies. TIM and Sant'Anna School consolidate their strong partnership with the research project SMOOTI.
During the press conference, Gianluca De Petris, coordinator of the TIM Joint Open Lab Health & Wellbeing - Pisa, Antonio Tirri, TIM project manager, Judit Ronai, computer engineer, Emanuele Ruffaldi, researcher and “Sensing, Modeling and Learning for Humans” team leader at Sant’Anna School PERCRO Lab., presented SMOOTI research project.
The SMOOTI project funded by TIM WHITE Joint Open Lab. located in Sant’Anna School, was carried out by TeCIP Institute (for Communication Technologies, Information and Perception) PERCRO Lab. researchers, in cooperation with Human Resources – Health, Safety & Environment TIM group, and Tuscany TIM technicians of Access Operations Line Toscana Ovest. Infact, the TIM technicians conducted early tests in Tuscany.
One of the pillars of innovation in the industry 4.0 is the issue of workplace safety. For this reason, TIM and Sant'Anna School have developed the SMOOTI project, easily wearable wireless system, using both inertial and electromyographic sensors (non-invasive technology able to pick up the electrical signals for muscle activity).
Using the wearable system we can reconstruct the muscle efforts of a worker during manual handling of heavy loads, learning safe work practices for correct execution of the movements and providing support and scientific evidence to physicians, to measure the workload when performing tasks.
Two prototype experiments have been conducted in collaboration with the TIM technicians during telecommunications network ordinary maintenance. The data acquired allow to improve the workers safety, to assess the quality of the system and to collect the results to set new standards.
Later, having concluded the preliminary tests , SMOOTI can be used by TIM customers - after the development of appropriate procedures - and distributed throughout Italy.
"The project has already produced tangible and useful results for the prevention of stress disorders, greatly improving the fit and the accuracy of the measurements in the second prototype” - said Valeria D'Amico, responsible for TIM Joint Open Lab - "It was important, for successful experiments, the availability of the required expertise and a great deal of attention given to Access Operations project ".
"SMOOTI falls into the category of occupational biomechanics - commented Emanuele Ruffaldi, researcher and group leader of Sensing, Modeling and Learning for Humans Laboratory - where we combine expert knowledge on wearable systems and movement analysis in real time. The system, developed entirely in our laboratory, allowed to create a flexible and efficient solution, which is now geared towards further research in different areas".
