In industrial and training environments, understanding how people move, interact with tools, and perform physical tasks is essential for improving both safety and efficiency. Among the methodologies used to evaluate ergonomic performance, the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) has become one of the most widely adopted tools for identifying postural risks and preventing musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace. Originally developed to assess whole-body ergonomic risk in occupational settings, REBA provides a systematic method for analyzing body posture, movement, force, repetition, and task-related physical demands. The methodology is particularly valuable because it allows researchers, trainers, and ergonomics specialists to quickly identify potentially harmful working positions and evaluate the level of intervention required to reduce physical strain and the risk of injury.
Why Ergonomic Assessment Matters
In many industrial contexts, workers are required to perform repetitive movements, maintain static postures, or interact with machinery and tools in ways that can generate physical stress over time. Poor ergonomic conditions can lead not only to discomfort and fatigue, but also to long-term musculoskeletal disorders affecting the back, shoulders, neck, and upper limbs.
Methods such as REBA help organizations move from reactive approaches to preventive strategies. Instead of addressing injuries only after they occur, ergonomic assessment allows companies and researchers to identify critical issues early and redesign tasks, workflows, or training procedures to improve worker wellbeing and operational safety.
Beyond traditional workplaces, ergonomic assessment is becoming increasingly important within immersive and virtual training environments, where user posture and movement can be monitored in real time and analyzed in controlled simulation scenarios.
REBA and Immersive Technologies
The ErgonXR (developed during the MasterXR first open call) integration of REBA methodologies with Virtual Reality and XR technologies opens new opportunities for training, research, and workplace evaluation. By combining immersive simulations with ergonomic analysis tools, researchers can study how users interact with industrial environments without exposing them to real-world risks.
Within VR-based training scenarios, participants can perform operational tasks while systems monitor posture, movement quality, and physical performance. This makes it possible to identify incorrect ergonomic behaviors during the learning process itself, helping users develop safer and more efficient working habits from the very beginning. The use of digital environments also allows researchers to test multiple task configurations, workstation layouts, and interaction models in flexible and repeatable ways. As a result, immersive technologies can support the development of more human-centered industrial systems that prioritize both productivity and worker well-being.
Cognitive Ergonomics and User Experience Evaluation
Beyond physical ergonomics, an equally important aspect of immersive training environments concerns cognitive ergonomics — understanding how users mentally experience, process, and respond to virtual simulations. In XR-based training systems, evaluating only posture and movement is not sufficient; it is also essential to analyze users’ sense of presence, cognitive workload, perceived effort, and overall interaction experience. For this reason, within the experimental protocol of the EMPAIRED project, cognitive ergonomics is assessed through the integration of validated evaluation questionnaires specifically designed for immersive environments and workload analysis.
One of the tools adopted is the Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ), a validated questionnaire widely used to evaluate the user experience in Virtual Reality environments. The IPQ measures several dimensions related to immersion and presence, including spatial presence, involvement, and perceived realism within the virtual environment. In the EMPAIRED experimental setup, the original realism-related items were partially adapted and replaced with additional items specifically designed to evaluate participants’ perception and interaction with the embodied avatar Alex, allowing researchers to better investigate the role of avatar-based assistance within immersive training scenarios. Alongside presence evaluation, the experimental protocol also incorporates the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX), one of the most established and internationally recognized tools for measuring perceived workload during task execution. The NASA-TLX evaluates how demanding a task is perceived to be across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, perceived performance, effort, and frustration. This methodology allows researchers to gain a deeper understanding not only of task complexity, but also of how immersive training environments affect users cognitively and emotionally.
By combining ergonomic posture analysis with cognitive workload and presence evaluation, the EMPAIRED experimentation adopts a more holistic approach to human performance assessment in XR environments. This integration enables researchers to better understand the relationship between physical interaction, cognitive effort, immersion, and learning effectiveness, contributing to the development of safer, more accessible, and more human-centered immersive training systems.
References
- Schubert, T., Friedmann, F., & Regenbrecht, H. (2001). The Experience of Presence: Factor Analytic Insights. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 10(3), 266–281. (Igroup Presence Questionnaire – IPQ)
- Hart, S. G., & Staveland, L. E. (1988). Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load Index): Results of Empirical and Theoretical Research. In P. A. Hancock & N. Meshkati (Eds.), Human Mental Workload. Elsevier.
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