Ergonomic evaluation of conventional agricultural sprayers with respect to human performance

Ergonomic intervention in spraying operation can provide a reasonable basis for recommendation on operating methods and improvement in operation for more output and safety. Two commercially available sprayers namely knapsack sprayer and rocker sprayer were evaluated with nine male subjects for the study. Age, weight and height of the selected subjects are 30.33±1.93 years, 68.33±9.51 kg and 168.51±5.55 cm respectively. The major operational parameters including pressure and lever arm distance of the sprayers were selected and optimized based on human performance. Heart beat rate and operating energy requirement for ergo refined knapsack and rocker arm sprayers were observed as 93-120 beats per minute, 97-120 beats per minute, and 18.8624.31 KJ min-1, 19.27-25.54 KJ min-1 respectively. The field evaluation results showed that ergo refined knapsack sprayer and ergo refined rocker sprayer reduced the energy expenditure by 7% and 8%, oxygen consumption as percentage of VO2 max by 19% and 23%, “HR results gave a reduction of 22% and 23%, ODR results gave a reduction by 4% and 5% and BPDS score indicated a reduction of 13% to 12% respectively from the conventional sprayers. The above results confirmed that the ergo refined sprayers provided better comfort and efficiency to the operator.