A system for detecting hand-arm vibration in the use of portable shakers for olives harvesting

The mechanization of olive harvesting is very important both to reduce the costs of production and to assure the oil quality because the manual harvest does not allow to operate at the right time and also need a long period to be completed. The use of portable shakers, that are spreading more than others typologies, can give a solution to the problem. However, the use of such equipment may involve risk of exposure to hand-transmitted vibration. The aim of this study was to assess the level of exposure to hand-arm vibration of the operators using portable shakers (reference standards UNI EN ISO 5349-1:2004, Italian Low Decree 81/2008). An effective approach would rather involve to equip the worker with suitable instruments to monitor and analyze the vibration exposure, thus providing a valuable information to prevent health hazards. Recent wireless sensing and communicating technologies can effectively be employed for such purpose. In such context, the present research proposes an innovative system aimed at estimating the hand-arm exposure to vibration according to the Standard EN ISO 5349-1:2004. In particular the proposed system is based on Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology and involves the design of a compact wearable unit to be attached to the waist of the operator and a fixed station for data storage and analysis. A commonly used model was evaluated performing both field and laboratory tests.