The growing demand for raw materials and energy as well as the need to catalogue these resources in underwater locations has caused a growing interest among the c0untries of Central Europe and the USSR in the development of technology connected with the explaration and exploitation of these resources. The paper presents the ergonomic rules for the designing of electro-hydraulic underwater tools for hyperbaric divers and shows results of tests which were carried out on various drillers of different ergonomical properties. The purpose of these tests was to find out to what degree the improvement of the ergonomical properties of the tools effects the diver's performance. The best results were noted in the case of driller WH-10 (Fig. 6) and WH-25E (Fig. 7); both had almost identical ergonomical properties. The driller WH-25 (Fig. 8), showed effect almost 66% lower.
Although there is a tendency to limit the work done by man underwater to a minimum, to this date, most of the inspection, maintenance and repair of underwater installation up to a depth of 400m are carried out by divers, (Gregory J. 1985). This leads to a difficult problem of ensuring suitable ergonomic conditions for the diver, during the time spent underwater, in the diving suit, As is well known, divers use a large number of tools and equipment, which are rather expensive, (Marsland G.E., 1985). Due to the high cost, efforts has been made to minimize the time spent underwater by means of both suitable training and equiping the divers and auxillary personel with the best
