Computer-aided ergonomics is an engineering discipline using computers to solve complex ergonomic problems involving interaction between the human body and its environment. The human body holds a great complexity thus it can be beneficial to use computers to solve problems involving the human body and the environment that surrounds it.
Overview
Computer-aided ergonomics is an interdisciplinary field of work that involves the use of a computer to solve complex problems regarding a human body interacting with an environment. As the title reveals, having a computer to help find the best ergonomic solution in a given situation. Ergonomics traditionally involves many disciplines including biomechanics, anthropometry, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, kinesiology, health sciences and physiology. Due to the highly interdisciplinary and complex nature of ergonomics it is hard to get a full understanding of a situation. As the human body is a complex system, thus it is beneficial to have a computer system that models the human body as a mechanical system. The human body contains several parts that can be modeled as known mechanical systems, for example bones connected with joints and driven by actuators (muscles).
Example of a system
One example of a computer system that can be used as a computer-aided ergonomics system is The AnyBody Modeling System that consider the human body as a dynamic multi-rigid-body system. The human model is a public domain model contains most of the bones, muscles and joints that are present in the human body. The model has more than 1000 muscle elements, and many muscle elements have been modeled with detailed muscle model theory described by Hill, A.V. in 1938. The muscle model contains information including physiological cross-sectional area, length, ratio of red and white fibers. The AnyBody modeling system is capable of modeling almost any human voluntary movement or static situation. One example of a model, could be a seated model, where the human body is placed in a chair, that have a seat, backrest, headrest, leg rest, footrest, and armrest. The model can then calculate the forces acting between the human body and the chair, as well as for example the forces between any given spinal vertebra. This could be used for finding the optimal seated posture for a person, who has lower back pain, assuming that greater load on a vertebra result in greater pain.