ZDS

Dave Goodall Resume

Biomechanics Corporation Of America analyse workplace tasks and provide clients with ergonomic assessments of risk and liability to injury.

In part this assessment is based on collection and analysis of data on musculoskeletal stresses on the employee and historical injury and illness data.

The primary ErgoLab analysis is based on Biomechanic's 'Mannequin Pro V' software package. This allows a wire-frame human figure to be placed into a simulated workstation layout. The three dimensional body postures during each stage of the task can be simulated.

Mannequin can calculate the forces involved at any place in the skeleton, and correlate these with National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) limits.

The results of this analysis identify the risk potential to each body part at each stage of the task, and provide a projection of the Workmen's Compensation costs of potential injuries.

Recommendations and cost estimates for re-designing the task to minimize injury potential are made.

As part of the EARLY process a short videotape is made of the task being performed.

The difficult part was translating the videotape into the sequence of 3-D wire-frame figures in the Mannequin package.

I programmed extensions to the Mannequin program to do this.

Step 1 is a dialog to let the user configure a capture sequence from the videotape. The main purpose of this is to give the user control over the frame sampling rate so that the task can be divided into a reasonable number of steps. The Video Blaster has a limited frame capture buffer so longer capture sequences can only be done at the expense of image resolution.

The required number of frames are captured from the Video Blaster frame buffer, saved as .bmp files if the user requests this, and displayed as multiple miniature images in a scrollable dialog.

This sequence is of the author running one of umpteen video tests. The main injury hazard of this activity is the freely given comments of co-workers passing by my cube.

The user can move an outline cursor to any frame, and select it with a double click. The image is then displayed full size and control returns from the extension code back to regular Mannequin code.

At this point the image is expanded to full size. The user picks a wire-frame figure closest to the video image from the standard body posture list and starts on the task of adjusting the wire-frame figure to overlay the video as closely as possible.

Click on this link for an summary of Mannequin Pro.