  Routine ergonomic assessment of postures and gestures in the workplace are
mostly conducted by visual observations, either direct or based on video
recordings. Nowadays, low-cost three-dimensional cameras like Microsoft Kinect
open the possibility of recording the full kinematics of workers in a
non-intrusive way, providing a more precise, and reliable assessment of their
motor strategies. As an illustration, we focus on a peculiar kind of workers:
professional musicians (violinists), whose playing is representative of a work
situation involving repeated gestures and postures that can be described as
non-ergonomic. We show that the Microsoft Kinect can be efficiently used to
quantify the motion performed by these musicians. Moreover, we argue that
low-cost three-dimensional cameras can be a useful aid in ergonomic risk
assessment of developing musculoskeletal disorders and give the example of the
repetition of movements and postural items included in the OCRA checklist,
whose scoring can be facilitated by such a device, as addressed in our TRACK
TMS research project.
