In the domain of industrial assembly, especially in tasks involving manual activities in conjunction with robots, the physical and mental burden on human workers or operators is often a critical concern. Prolonged exposure to ergonomically challenging positions can lead to both physical and mental strain, leading to musculoskeletal disorders and increased fatigue. Addressing these challenges requires the introduction of human-centric assistance systems that are capable of enhancing human wellbeing and upgrading workplace safety, while ensuring a symbiosis of human and robotic capabilities.

For this reason, human operators need to be empowered with assistance systems that can be used unobtrusively in existing assembly workplaces, and are largely independent of specific robot types and machines. Wearable assistance systems that are designed in a human-centric manner offer a great potential for human operators as they are not only appropriate for ensuring safe cooperation, but also for maintaining physical and mental health. The key lies in obtaining reliable information about the positioning and posture of the human during the execution of activities, and applying sophisticated AI-based data analytics for ergonomic analysis in order to provide the human operator with situational support in real-time.

In conjunction with these challenges and requirements, thanks to the application experiment “SensorStack” PUMACY Technologies pursues the development and demonstration of an intelligent wearable sensor system based on a combination of fiber-optic sensors + IMUs with AI-empowered data analytics, that transforms the human into an intelligently acting component of a semi-automated assembly environment. The wearable sensor system will assist operators with recommendations through mixed reality (via an XR-Headset) in real-time, which guides the human in a hands-on manner during the execution of their activity, as well as ensuring ergonomic compliance, improving wellbeing, and maintaining safety. The building block 12 ‘Mixed reality for operator’ will be integrated in the Data Analytic Stack and Sensor System with the support and expertise of Flanders Make, so that extension of Pumacy technologies’s services and upgrade and alignment of the features with real-time ergonomic guidance and recommendations.