Technical Intervention for Assessment of Physiological Characteristics as Function of Operating Force in Traditional Agricultural Operations

Pedaling and treadling are two popular traditional operational modes in agriculture. An instrumentation system has been developed to assess the physiological behavior of workers as functionality of operating forces. The setup has been designed based on Indian anthropometry particularly related to agricultural workers and integrated with the instrumentation system consisting load cell, microcontroller, amplifier and Hall-effect sensor. Loads were applied by the action of treadling and pedaling, and the forces were measured. A Hall-effect sensor was incorporated to determine the position of the actuating unit. The system was calibrated under various loads (R2 = 0.99). The physiological characteristics of subjects were recorded under dynamic operating conditions amounting ranges of working heart rate within 84 to 126 beats/min and oxygen consumption rate within 0.42 to 0.92 l/min during pedaling. For treadling, the values ranged within 94 to 136 beats/min for heart rate and 0.63 to 1.03 l/min for oxygen consumption rate. A large volume of data was gathered using a large number of individual subjects. Pedaling was observed to be under light category till 10% of maximum foot strength was applied and under moderately heavy category till 25% of the maximum foot strength was applied. Similarly, treadling operation was found in light category till 7% of maximum foot strength was applied and under moderately heavy category till 22.7% of maximum foot strength was applied. On comparison, treadling was identified as the more energy-consuming operation as compared to pedaling, and physiological parameters were observed to be within the acceptable ranges.