Construcción, pruebas técnicas y evaluación de un prototipo para el análisis de cargas posturales en la mano de trabajadores de oficina.

Abstract

The construction, technical tests and evaluation of a Prototype for the analysis of the hand postural tremor in office workers through the use of MATLAB software in order to prevent occupational diseases. The current valid methods for ergonomic analysis such as: RULA (Rapid Upper Limb Assessment), REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) and OWAS (Ovako Working Analysis System) were identified by using bibliographic research, in addition the percentile interpolation method and Rohmert's law were used to deepen and detail the analysis in a better way. The Prototype design was made taking into account the comfort and safety for the user, the bending sensors that holds it as well as the weight of the Prototype. The developed software which handles the prototype consists of an interface that plots the hand postural tremor in real time, also it allows to obtain the maximum exposure time and the percentile as well as determine the existence of risky angles for the hand of the person being tested. The calculated sample size was 640 data per bending sensor, this was taken from employees of the Polytechnic Welfare office at Escuela Superior Politécnica of Chimborazo. It was obtained that the data behave in a quadratic way in all postural tremors: 84.33% of the data corresponding to the angles in the extension movement, as well as the 78.70% of the data corresponding to the angles in the abduction movement in the office workers studied are high risk. In addition, it was obtained that from 30% to 40% of the total work time are risky angles. The prototype measures and processes the hand postural tremors of office workers in a satisfactory way, and also it is comfortable and does not impede the daily work of the user. It is recommended to deepen the results with occupational physicians as well as with a certified software.