Validation of an Inverse Kinematic VR Manikin in Seated Tasks: Application in Ergonomics Training

Lower back and neck pain are common musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) among dentists and dentistry students. Increased awareness of ergonomics during job tasks could help to reduce MSDs. Virtual reality (VR) enhanced dentistry training programs are gaining popularity in academia. Quantifying inverse kinematics (IK) using VR manikins that mimic a user’s body can inform ergonomic risk evaluations. We calibrated and investigated one of the IK manikins' accuracy compared to motion capture (MoCap) using a novel method. We show that posture estimation using VR is accurate to less than 10° in 81% of the seated pick and place tasks for the neck and trunk angles. These results suggest that an accurate estimation of posture in VR is achievable to inform real-time postural feedback. This postural feedback can be integrated into VR enhanced training for dental students to help reinforce ergonomic posture and safer movements.