Abstract
We employed some newly developed instruments, such as a portable meter for measuring pushing and pulling strength and a kind of portable torque meter, in addition to the existing instruments. By applying those existing apparatus and the newly developed instruments, we measured the installation performance and the delivery performance of the household apparatus. And we examined the correlation existing between the requirements of the operational apparatus and the operational characteristics of the users.
Most of the subjects expressed that the operational apparatus installed in the multiple dwelling house were with appropriate height for them to use, but very few of them found that the equipment installed at public facilities was operational with the force for them to put forth easily. The operating height and the operating physical force required by those installed equipment were at almost the same levels with the height of the equipment which was difficult to handle and the maximum operating physical force that the octogenarian group experienced in the laboratory. When we evaluated the operating height and the operating physical force of the installed apparatus by using the sliding scale, we found that the operating height of the apparatus was generally designed significantly higher than the optimum operating height and that the operating physical force required by the apparatus was also considerably stronger than the force the octogenarian group felt rather easily to put forth.
