Development of Ergonomic Evaluation Technology for Improvement of Work Environment in Driver’s Cabs

초록

Drivers' physical and mental conditions while operating trains may be closely related to human errors. It shall be ideal to apply ergonomic elements to the design of locomotive cab. For preventing drivers' errors, evaluation and improvement for work environment including the environment of driver's cab, layout and workstation design are required in addition to current competency system and training. The projects for a driver's cab were completed in Europe. In contrast, as for the railway field in Korea, the standard on driver’s cab has been recently proposed as part of the guidelines on locomotive vehicle safety standard, but studies on ergonomic design of locomotive vehicles considering domestic drivers’ physical characteristics are insufficient. In this context, Korea Railroad Research Institute have tried with this research project since 2011 to improve the safety of railway vehicles by eliminating potential human errors through the enhancement of work environment in driving cabs where engineers operate the trains. This paper introduces the results of this research project. As for the research methods, we have tried to achieve the safety of railway vehicles by applying system engineering approach and various scientific approaches in an attempt to identify and implement system requirements in lifetime and hierarchical perspective.