Farming is a typical task that includes repetitive tasks, incomplete working positions, and weight work, along with exposure to a number of musculoskeletal diseases and harmful factors. Therefore, in this study, work clothes were developed for older agricultural workers exposed to musculoskeletal diseases and alienated from the medical system. Work clothes can help in repetitive cropping and support the load on the work, preventing and mitigating farmers" diseases. To verify the effectiveness of the developed clothing, six men in their 20s were evaluated for muscle usage before and after wearing the clothing in two ways: stoop lifting and squat lifting. The results of this study showed that the mass of most muscles, except the gastrocnemius muscle, was reduced during lifting operations by stoop lifting after wearing work clothes. The reason why the gastrocnemius was more activated was that the ankle joint was greatly activated by dorsal flexion. For squatting and lifting, most of the muscle usage was reduced. In future research, we want to analyze the muscle characteristics of actual agricultural workers on wearing work clothes.
In this paper, we assessed muscular activities of lower limbs and foot pressure for car and bus drivers according to operating three electronic pedals that we developed. To analyze drivers’ physical exhaustion, muscular fatigue of lower limbs was evaluated. Eleven car drivers and six urban bus drivers were participated in this experiment. The virtual driving system was used for the real driving environment. The virtual driving system was comprised of a spring seat, a steering wheel, pedals (clutch, excel and brake pedals), a manual transmission and a virtual driving simulation. For the real vibration like situation on the road, six degree of freedom motion base system was used. Measured muscles were rectus femoris (RF), biceps femoris (BF), tibialis anterior (TA) and gastrocnemius (Gn) muscles. For the quantitative muscular activities, integrated electromyography (IEMG) was analyzed. Muscular fatigues also were analyzed through the analysis of the median frequency. In addition, foot pressures were analyzed and compared through the peak and averaged pressure during the operating three developed electronic pedals. The experiments are conducted with total 17 drivers, 11 general public and 6 drivers. As a result of the analysis, electromyogram and fatigue analysis through intermediate frequency reduction for pedal-1 more efficient than other pedals. And foot pressure also was decreased. Consequently, we suggested the most efficient pedal and method to minimize the amount of cumulative fatigue.