Hand arm vibration generated by a rotary pick-up for table olives harvesting

The manual harvest of olives is one of the most expensive operations in the table olives production, but the use of the electric hand-guided machines triples the productivity. The development of these new machines leads to changes in the harvesting methodologies and in the operator's working behavior. These items may also affect the hand-arm vibration (HAV) transmitted to the operators during the work. Aim of this study is to evaluate the hand-arm vibration transmitted to the operator using an experimental electric labor saving machine with rotary combs with teeth of different dimensions covered by silicon to minimize the damage to the drupes. Moreover, the olives removal forces have been analyzed to understand if the force necessary to detach the drupes is correlated to the vibration levels transmitted to the operator's hand arm. With this type of hand held olive harvester, it has been found that higher is the fruit removal force, higher are the measured vibration levels.