Development and Evaluation of a GPS-Based Weeding System for Reducing the Risk of Musculoskeletal Disorders among Agricultural Workers. Final Progress Report September 1, 2009-August 31, 2012
(Englisch)
Bitte wählen Sie ihr Lieferland und ihre Kundengruppe
Weed control is a very important issue for farmers, particularly for those producing vegetable crops. Weeds are currently controlled by chemical herbicides and manual weeding, which is a strenuous task that exposes agricultural workers to various musculoskeletal and low back disorders risk factors. There is clear need to develop new and innovative methods of weed control in order to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders associated with weed control, to reduce the introduction of herbicides into the environment, and to increase the competitiveness of farmers. Hence, the main purpose of this project is to reduce both the risk of musculoskeletal disorders among agricultural workers performing manual weeding tasks, and the amount of chemical herbicides required for weed control by automatically controlling weeds mechanically between crop plants. Several studies were performed to achieve the project’s goals. Building upon earlier work by our group, we have successfully further developed a global positioning system (GPS)-based approach that can accurately map the location of each crop plant during transplanting. This accurate information has been combined with an improved mechanical weed knife to develop a GPS-controlled automatic weed knife system for controlling weeds between plants. Compared to traditional manual weeding, this system has been shown to be effective in reducing the required man-hours per hectare by 52%. This level of labor reduction potentially represents a significant savings in the cost of manual labor for hand hoeing, especially for framers who already own and implement GPS-technology in their agricultural practices. To further take advantage of this novel approach by small farmers and/or farmers who do not own a GPS system, the automatic cutting system has been modified in such a way as to allow semi-automatic activation without the need for a GPS system. Studies conducted in this project have shown that this system holds very good promise in replacing the fully-automatic GPS-based system, again reducing the required labor by about 50%. This reduction in labor cost and hours is expected to also reduce workers’ exposure to musculoskeletal disorders risk factors. The semi-automatic weeding system requires an operator to observe and occasionally control the opening and closing of the knives system. Studies on the mental workload required by this task have shown that the task places moderate level of mental workload on the operator, with little physical effort. Improvements in interface and workstation designs, as well as in the knives system were recommended or implemented (improved knife system). Lastly, two types of hoes were compared to the traditional weeding hoe for their potential use during close-to-plant weeding. This evaluation showed that manual weeding exhibits high level of risk to the lower back regardless which hoe type is used. However, one type (the “Hula” hoe) may be a good alternative for smaller weeds due to its lighter weight, which will be the case after treatment by either the GPS-controlled or semi-automatic weeding system. Further studies are underway to explore expanding this approach to multiple crop rows in order to maximize its economic and health outcome effectiveness.
Development and Evaluation of a GPS-Based Weeding System for Reducing the Risk of Musculoskeletal Disorders among Agricultural Workers. Final Progress Report September 1, 2009-August 31, 2012