ABSTRACT
Human muscle fatigue is the main result of diminishing muscle capability, leading to reduced performance and increased risk of falls and injury. This study provides a classification model to identify the human fatigue level based on the motion signals collected by a smartphone. 24 participants were recruited and performed the fatiguing exercise (i.e. squatting). Upon completing each set of squatting, they walked for a fixed distance while the smartphone attached to their right shank and the gait data were associated with the Borg's Rating of Perceived Exertion (i.e. data label). Our machine-learning model of two (no- vs. strong-fatigue), three (no-, medium-, and strong-fatigue) and four (no-, low-, medium-, and strong-fatigue) levels of fatigue reached the accuracy of 91, 78, and 64%, respectively. The outcomes of this study may facilitate the accessibility of a fatigue-monitoring tool in the workplace, which improves the workers' performance and reduce the risk of falls and injury. Practitioner Summary: This study aimed to develop a machine-learning model to identify human fatigue level using motion data captured by a smartphone attached to the shank. Our results can facilitate the development of an accessible fatigue-monitoring system that may improve the workers' performance and reduce the risk of falls and injury. Abbreviations: WMSD: work-related musculoskeletal disorders; IMU: inertial measurement unit; RPE: rating of perceived exertion; SVM: support vector machine; IRB: institutional review board; SOM: self-organizing map; LDA: linear discriminant analysis; PCA: principal component analysis; FT: fourier transformation; RBF: radial basis function; CUSUM: cumulative sum; ROM: range of motion; MVC: maximum voluntary contractions.
