Three-Dimensional Symmetric Maximum Weight Lifting Prediction

Lifting heavy weight is one of the main reasons for manual material handling related injuries which can be mitigated by determining the limiting lifting weight of a person. In this study, a 40 degrees of freedom (DOFs) spatial skeletal model was employed to predict the symmetric maximum weight lifting motion. The lifting problem was formulated as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) problem to minimize the dynamic effort and maximize the box weight. An inverse-dynamics-based optimization approach was used to determine the optimal lifting motion and the maximum lifting weight considering dynamic joint strength. The predicted lifting motion, ground reaction forces (GRFs), and maximum box weight were shown to match well with the experimental results. It was found that for the three-dimensional (3D) symmetric lifting the left and right GRFs were not same.