The objective was to develop a low cost and easy to adopt technology that could create true behavior change in industrial workers, encouraging good work posture and ultimately reducing lifting injuries. The product would need to be cheap enough that it could be deployed to large numbers of workers within industrial companies. The objective was for workers to create a special bond with the device, trusting their health to it, and knowing it’s rugged enough to withstand the same environment as they do.

Taking advantage of the advances in sensors, computation and machine learning algorithms, a belt mounted wearable device was developed, that can measure posture in real-time through low cost sensors. In order to reconstruct the worker’s posture virtually, sensor data from the device was coupled with machine learning algorithms to decide if a specific action constituted a lift.

• Real-time feedback: each time a worker performed a high risk lift, real-time feedback was given in the form of a vibration, to create awareness. A screen was placed on the device to communicate current count of high risk lifts, and a target for the day.

• Product attachment: The product was made out of fiber glass-filled plastics for strength, attached to the belt with a novel CAM-clipping mechanism that ensured it does not move once in place. The closing of the clip requires some force, and is accompanies by an acoustic click when closed, which evokes industrial machinery.

• Gamification: leaderboards ranking workers by high risk lifts were automatically generated each day to encourage healthy competition; and

• Mobile software analytics: provide management with data analysis tools to visualize each individual worker’s risk profile and use corrective actions before an injury occurs.

Each worker is assigned their own device, which they can customize with stickers etc. The screen displays the worker’s name as soon as it is placed in its charging dock, so the worker can pick it up the next day. The device is currently at the beta production stage, with 300 units deployed at Intel, Caterpillar and a large automotive manufacturer.

The objective was to develop a low cost and easy to adopt solution that could create true behavior change in industrial workers. Each iteration of the device was taken into warehouses and tested on workers:

• Fabric was considered non-ideal, as once sweaty neither the company nor the worker were willing to wash them.

• Workers wanted to keep track of their progress, but were not entirely willing to download a work related app on their personal phone.

• The product would need to be cheap enough that it could be deployed to large numbers of workers.

• Once attached to the belt, the device had to stay still, but can come off if impacted with enough force in order to avoid injury to the worker.

The devices were rolled out to 35 workers at 3 pilot sites. A screen on the device communicates workers their current progress and provides them with a daily target to reach. Software (on a tablet) was used by managers to show workers their overall progress and rank compared to their peers. The pilot trial at Crane logistics showed that the number of high risk lifts performed by each worker per day, reduced from 140 to 22 (-84%). Similarly, at a global package delivery company a reduction of 55% was reported, and 77% at Caterpillar. When surveyed, 80% of workers mentioned they would recommend management to buy the product for their use. It was demonstrated that workers were 2 times less likely to get injured wearing a Kinetic device that without it. This provides an expected return on investment that future customers can expect.

In a truly e-commerce and on-demand based economy, more than 25M US workers perform material handling activities: they move our goods and mine our raw materials, construct our buildings, and create the energy needed to power our society. Last year US companies spent $60bn on lifting related injuries, the most expensive cause of injury in the US, most of which is preventable. Most injuries happen due to cumulative trauma on the spine and surrounding muscles, caused by repetitive bad biomechanics when lifting.