A Virtual Assistant for Safety Measurements Evaluating the Worker Hand-Arm Exposure to Percussion Machines Vibration

This paper proposes an innovative virtual assistant able to check the safety requirements concerning vibration exposure of workers using hand-held percussion machines. Typically, the exposition to high and continual vibrations with the passing of time may facilitate the onset of pathologies affecting vascular and neurological systems, or be cause of syndromes to hand-arm bones and muscles. So Standards and regulations impose exposure limits in order to prevent health hazards. The projected system is able to measure and estimate the daily worker exposure to vibration according to the Standard ISO 5349. User identification is performed by a personal memory device storing data and information concerning the worker and his daily activity. Three orthogonal transducers measure the acceleration transmitted to the hand-arm system and a DSP unit has the task to process data in order to estimate the vibration exposure during the working activity. If the law safety limits are overcome, the device shows on display an alert message followed by an acoustic alarm so to force the worker to stop the machine usage. The aim of the proposed system is to provide a prevention tool for assuring safe working conditions. The system assists the worker exposed to vibrations in order to avoid the absorption of levels above the maximum tolerable or permitted daily limit.