Only half of European workers aged 55-64 are still in employment today - with strong gender and regional differences. To fight the consequences of demographic change, which puts considerable strain on social security systems, many EU countries have already raised the official retirement age and have often also restricted possibilities for early retirement.
This however can only be achieved if the work is made more sustainable for an ageing workforce, in terms of good working conditions, physical and mental well-being, and work–life balance.
BIONIC is a European research project that developed a mobile, unobtrusive and privacy preserving platform for real-time ergonomic risk alerting and coaching, enabling the design of workplace interventions adapted to the needs and fitness levels of specific ageing workforce. Optimal engagement of the workers is supported by motivating, gamified education elements for prevention and self-management of musculoskeletal health in any working/living environment.
The BIONIC system can be integrated unobtrusively into different types of cloth and can be used by a worker throughout the full working day and at home or in the gym.
The application aim is two-fold
1) to give health related feedback to the user
2) to obtain evidence-based data to medically sound workplace recommendation in any environment.
The BIONIC system is adjustable to the fitness and age of the worker and performs ergonomic monitoring and feedback to the user, e.g. for prevention exercises at home.
The recorded data is completely transparent for the user and can be useful as information source for strain estimation, e.g. by medical staff.
The main objectives of the BIONIC project are:
- Monitoring and prevention of work-related risk factors for the various types of musculoskeletal diseases (MSD) and related disorders.
- Continuous medically sound persuasive and unobtrusive coaching, e.g. for men and women with chronic musculoskeletal diseases
The scientific and technical objectives to reach these goals are:
- Creating an innovative, holistic and unobtrusive body sensor network (BSN) that can be freely and loosely integrated into sportswear, workwear and Personal Protective Equipment
- Allowing for completely mobile real-time and intelligent sensor data fusion and analysis
- GDPR compliant user data management, analysis, presentation and protection
- Kinematic and biomechanical models for age adapted ergonomic risk assessment and workplace analysis
- Gamified user coaching and user interaction
- Validation of the system in a real setting, i.e. at workplaces, home, outdoor activities
