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NSC grant program backs AR, exoskeletons and AI for workplace injury prevention
The National Safety Council said it awarded nearly $200,000 across four university teams in 2024 to 2025 to test technology aimed at reducing musculoskeletal disorders, which have been the largest workplace injury category for 25 years.
The National Safety Council said musculoskeletal disorders remain the largest category of workplace injury and have cost employers billions of dollars annually in workers’ compensation, lost productivity and turnover for the past 25 years. To speed practical prevention strategies, NSC’s MSD Solutions Lab awarded nearly $200,000 across four university research teams under its 2024 to 2025 Research to Solutions grant program, with each project focused on a different technology-driven approach to reducing MSD risk in real work settings, according to Risk & Insurance. NSC reported that North Carolina State University received $49,999 to develop and field-test an augmented reality tool that overlays three-dimensional reach zone visualizations onto a worker’s physical environment in real time. The app used a Meta Quest 3 headset to show color-coded reach areas, green, yellow and red, tied to established ergonomic guidelines. In field testing, NSC said 20 workers across three facilities evaluated the AR tool in environments including an agricultural machinery manufacturer and a pharmaceutical production site. NSC said participants completed tasks in roughly 9 to 41 seconds on average and rated the tool favorably on a usability questionnaire, and workers described the color-coded system as intuitive, saying it was best for targeted uses such as onboarding and periodic workstation reassessments rather than continuous shop-floor use.