Assessment of the handcart pushing and pulling safety by using deep learning 3D pose estimation and IoT force sensors

•Manual safety management of pushing and pulling (P&P) tasks is inefficient.•IoT force sensors were used to assess P&P forces.•Safety of P&P acts was assessed from 3D poses obtained with the VIBE algorithm.•Besides increased forces, unsafe P&P acts are correlated with the P&P momentum.•Future studies should account for turn-points and loading/unloading of cargo.