Repetitive motion analysis: segmentation and event classification

Acquisition, analysis, and classification of repetitive human motion for the assessment of postural stress is of central importance to ergonomics practitioners. We present a two-threshold, multidimensional segmentation algorithm to automatically decompose a complex motion into a sequence of simple linear dynamic models. No a priori assumptions were made about the number of models that comprise the full motion or about the duration of the task cycle. A compact motion representation is obtained for each segment using parameters of a damped harmonic dynamic model. Event classification was performed using cluster analysis with the model parameters as input. Experiments demonstrate the technique on complex motion.