Detecting Improper Sitting Posture with a Laterally Positioned Motion-sensing Camera
**Abstract** Sitting posture detection is helpful for preventing musculoskeletal disorders. With the development of motion-sensing cameras and related software development kits (SDKs), it is possible to implement an application using skeleton detection technology. In this paper, a method is introduced to detect sitting posture from a lateral view without disturbing the user. To analyze video stream information, a skeleton thinning algorithm is described, and an averaging process is used to specifically locate the main joints from the lateral side. The results show this method has high accuracy when detecting improper sitting postures. **Keywords** Ergonomics; Motion-sensing Camera; Gesture Recognition; OpenNI