Office workers syndrome monitoring using kinect

Many office workers today sit and work at computers for extended periods of time, which can result in a group of symptoms called “Office Workers Syndrome”. To help prevent these symptoms, we propose a novel system to monitor computer users by using a Kinect camera. Firstly, data mining classification is applied for detection of prolonged sitting, while mathematics that include a spherical coordinate system and geometry as well as threshold models is applied to detect unhealthy postures. Secondly, the system gives an alert to the user when unhealthy postures are detected, via simple popup/voice messages or via an alerting device developed by using a microcontroller. Moreover, this research also focuses on enhancing the user experience, various user-interfaces and data visualization techniques for generating useful summary reports are provided.