Evaluation of Labor Burden Reduction Achieved through Wearing an Agricultural Power Assist Suit

Araie, Toshitake; Nishizawa, Uichi; Ikeda, Tomozumi; Kakimoto, Akira; Toyama, Shigeki

doi:10.7763/ijmo.2017.v7.584

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…This secondary attention appears in a review by Poulianiti et al, 2019 [18] that provides a list of energy cost estimations, based on indirect calorimetry, in jobs/tasks included in agriculture, which count 14 studies from 1953 to 1989. To these may be added further studies [19][20][21][22]. In every case, all these studies are related more to agriculture than to the management of green areas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metabolic Energy Consumption during Green Area Management

Bernardi,

Franco,

Messina

et al. 2023

Applied Sciences

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The energy consumption measurement is important to carry out a correct risk evaluation of workers during green area management with the scope to achieve workstyle improvements. In contrast to sporting activities, few studies have been conducted on the assessment of physical fatigue by determining the functional parameters of the human body and oxygen consumption in this sector. This study aims to measure the energy cost of weed control using a wearable telemetry system Cosmed K4. For this purpose, twelve male workers, grouped into three groups of four workers each, were monitored during the work of weed control carried out with a brush cutter (by testing three different cutting heads). The monitoring period lasted 18 min including a 5-min rest period at the end of work. This study shows how the use of facilitating tools such as brush cutters contributes to getting low energy metabolism rate values, in tests performed equally on average to 119 Wm−2.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metabolic Energy Consumption during Green Area Management

Bernardi,

Franco,

Messina

et al. 2023

Applied Sciences

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“…In addition, to reduce physical exertion of farmers, active exoskeleton type-the wearable agri-robot suit is developing and creating a robot suit with stability that does not fall over and can bend the ankle for overhead work in stoop posture (Toyama and Yamamoto, 2009). The results of this study are expected to be used for the improvement of a new version of a recently developed mechanical support, wearable agri-robot suit or power assist suit, PAS (Araie et al, 2017;Fig. 1 The average age, stature, and working hours per day during the busy season of berry thinning and cluster shaping, and TH of the study participants were 55 years, 169 cm, 9 h, and 170 cm, respectively.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…long time such as berry thinning, cluster shaping, and harvesting fruits by climbing the tree with a ladder(Araie et al, 2017). On the other hand, when farmers necessarily become to work in a stoop posture by twisting the trunk while pruning and fertilizer or compost application tasks because the height of the trellis is not constant, make not suitable for the robot suits.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Age, Stature and Trellis Height as Primary Risk Factors Interrelated with Musculoskeletal Symptoms of Vineyard Farmers

Nwe

Mochizuki

Toyama

et al. 2021

Japanese Journal of Farm Work Research

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The association of age, stature, and trellis height (TH) with the upper body musculoskeletal symptoms (MSS) in Japanese vineyard farmers was investigated to provide basic information for MSS health improvement and the creation of new version of mechanical wearable supports, such as the agri-robot suits. A total of 151 vineyard farmers responded to the questionnaire-based survey about workload and MSS with age, stature, and TH. Logistic regression, linear regression, and correlation analysis was used to test the association of MSS with age, stature, and TH in shoulder, upper back, and low back regions. Different significant risk factors for the upper back, shoulder, and lower back were noted. Older age, high TH, and small height difference (HD) between the stature and TH significantly increased the risk of shoulder, upper back, and lower back MSS, respectively. MSS were higher in the upper body than the lower body. These risk factors vary depending on the specific body region.High incidence rate (100%) was reported in the study population. Among farmers who desired to buy the robot suit (58%), asked for support of the whole body (42%), upper body (46%), and lower body (12%). The risks of MSS in vineyard farmers are high. Intervention measures such as relaxing postural stress by taking a regular break every hour might be beneficial. Lightening the muscle strain of the high risk body parts by reducing considerable exertion with mechanical support is also a great option.The wearable agri-robot suit should be improved, mainly focusing on the specific risk factors of the shoulder, upper back, and lower back regions to reduce physical strain. It is also worth to develop the suit in detachable design which can support whole body, upper part only, and lower part only.

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“…This university laboratory developed and evaluated the power assist suit (PAS) for farm work [3]- [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimation of Energy Consumption when Wearing Power Assist Suits

Araie¹,

Uichi²,

Ikeda³

et al. 2018

IJMO

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Abstract-Agricultural power assist suits (PAS) have been developed and researched in our laboratory. In this study, the performance of a PAS is evaluated without burdening subjects through kinetic simulation. According to the formula for deriving energy consumption, the ratio of the energy consumption to the joint torque is same. Therefore, the joint torque of the knee is derived to investigate the influence of kinetic simulation the on femur. According to kinetic simulation, a PAS can reduce energy consumption. Further, the performance of PAS can be extracted by adjusting size. The validity of simulation is evaluated by comparing with other results. The simulation results and dynamics calculations agree well, but the actual measurements of some subjects show differences. The factors considered are the measurement error of the joint angle, difference in the position for pasting the electrode to measure the myopotential, and the asymmetry of muscle tension. Differences with considerable errors were observed for some test subjects in comparison with actual values, but a good match was observed for the case in which the PAS was worn for those test subjects that also showed a good match for the case without the PAS.

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Evaluation of Labor Burden Reduction Achieved through Wearing an Agricultural Power Assist Suit

Cited by 6 publications

References 4 publications

Metabolic Energy Consumption during Green Area Management

Metabolic Energy Consumption during Green Area Management

Age, Stature and Trellis Height as Primary Risk Factors Interrelated with Musculoskeletal Symptoms of Vineyard Farmers

Estimation of Energy Consumption when Wearing Power Assist Suits

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