Development of Technology to Economize Energy Expenditure by Elderly Women for Selected Activities

Assessment of energy expenditure while performing 24 selected household and personal care related activities was done on twenty elderly women of 75±3 years of age. These activities were kitchen activities (peeling, chopping, grating, stacking utensils and making chapatis); clothing care (washing, ironing, ripping off seams, cutting, and restitching cloth); personal care (filling hot water bottle, opening medicine bottle, cutting and sorting out pills, using toilet, bathing and dressing); room care (making bed, dusting and arranging items for night) and other activities (climbing stairs, carrying load, opening jar, picking up items from floor and reaching out for high shelf). Results of the study revealed that maximum energy expenditure (10.03 kj/min) was observed while washing clothes followed by climbing stairs and making bed (9.76 and 8.19 kj/min respectively). Maximum percentage reduction (90.94, 84.61 and 84.24 percent) in energy expenditure was seen when subjects picked up items from floor using magnet picker, used pill cutter and weekly pill box to cut and sort out medicines and reached out to high shelf using reacher respectively; followed by opening jar, ironing ladies suit, cutting edges of cloth and opening medicine bottle using improved technologies.