A new study from tactile-sensing specialist PPS and Purdue University offers a shift in how safety teams evaluate manual lifting tasks, presenting a data-rich alternative to long-standing observational methods. Published in October 2025 on ScienceDirect, the research demonstrates how combining tactile and visual inputs captures the subtleties of human movement with greater precision than posture analysis alone. 

Tactile sensing has steadily expanded across robotics, healthcare and automation, yet its application in ergonomics has remained limited. Purdue’s study brings the technology directly into the safety domain. Using PPS’s TactileGlove, which records detailed pressure distribution through the hand, alongside a computer-vision posture model, the research team created a unified dataset that reveals how force shifts as a worker lifts, carries or adjusts to changing load height. 

“For decades, observational checklists and self-reported discomfort have been the main factors in evaluating injury,” explains Denny Yu, co-author and Purdue University researcher. “These methods record what can be seen, not what is felt, by measuring body angles and load weights but overlooks how pressure flows through the hands, wrists and forearms as a task unfolds. Tactile sensing can show the micro-interactions between human touch and physical effort.” 

These micro-interactions matter. Traditional ergonomic assessments provide high-level insight but often miss the early signals that precede strain or fatigue. The PPS-Purdue model captures these hidden stresses, showing how even small shifts in grip pressure indicate compensatory movements that can accumulate into injury risk. This moves ergonomics toward a more predictive footing grounded in measurable data rather than retrospective reporting. 

“We have spent two decades quantifying touch. What began in consumer electronics is now guiding safer industrial design,” added Dr Jae Son, Founder and CEO at PPS. “The Purdue partnership moves that vision forward by proving that tactile intelligence does not stop at the hand. This research shows how applied sensing can reshape ergonomics.” 

For safety engineers, the implications are clear. The TactileGlove records continuous interaction data without constraining motion, while the computer-vision model interprets posture in parallel. Together they form a risk profile that develops through the lift, offering actionable insight for task redesign, worker training and equipment specification. 

PPS views the work as a foundation for a new generation of ergonomic tools that rely on interaction-level information rather than inference. Readers can access the full published paper and supporting materials through the PPS website.