Abstract—An agricultural power assist suit (PAS) was developed and researched in our laboratory. The range of movements of the joints and the physical burden in retaining the posture when wearing the PAS were evaluated. The PAS was found to provide approximately 80% of the degree of freedom of the human body, and the muscle burden on the upper arms and thighs was reduced by 42.3 and 50.2%, respectively, on average during isometric exercises. The movements during pruning and harvesting work are yet to be evaluated. An experiment was conducted to study the body movements of farmers during the harvesting of radish and cucumber to evaluate the fatigue reduction effect owing to the use of the PAS. The workload was reduced by up to 77% for radish harvesting and up to 58% for cucumber harvesting, and the muscle activity was reduced by up to 64% for radish harvesting and up to 68% for cucumber harvesting when wearing the PAS.
Index Terms—Agricultural work, power assist suit, surface EMG, training impulse (TRIMP).
T. Araie, T. Ikeda, and A. Kakimoto are with the Polytechnic University of Japan, 2-32-1, Ogawa-nishimachi, Kodaira-shi, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: araie@uitec.ac.jp, ikeda@uitec.ac.jp, kakimoto@uitec.ac.jp).
S. Toyama is with the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16, Nakacho, Koganei, Tokyo, Japan (e-mail: toyama@cc.tuat.ac.jp).
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Cite: Toshitake Araie, Ikeda Tomozumi, Akira Kakimoto, and Shigeki Toyama, "Evaluation of Fatigue Reduction during Crop Harvesting Using a Power Assist Suit," International Journal of Modeling and Optimization vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 340-343, 2019.
