SmartHat: Self-Monitoring Alert and Reporting Technology for Hazard Avoidance and Training

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 22:20:34 +0000

Presented by: Jochen Teizer, Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology In the past two decades, more than 26,000 U.S. construction workers have died at work. That equates to approximately five construction worker deaths every working day. Of these fatalities, 25 percent involved heavy equipment, most being categorized as struck-by incidents. It is assumed that significant improvements can be gained in construction safety once technology is applied to existing safety management practices. The primary goal of the research team was to demonstrate how technology can be used to proactively alert construction personnel of the presence of hazards in real time. The secondary objective was to explore how emerging technology can revolutionize safety by taking advantage of automated work site monitoring, data collection, visualization, and reporting practices that transfer data to information and information to knowledge. Knowledge is finally applied at all safety levels, including advanced work task planning and training best practices. The researchers first designed and built a novel UHF passive RFID SmartHat device that is intrinsically safe, can be calibrated for distance, and has a very low to zero worker nuisance alert ratio. The SmartHat device is battery free, can read distances up to 19.5m, is reliable to use, and maintenance free. Feedback of 143 workers, superintendents, foremen, and safety managers who tested it was 100 percent positive. Ninety-six percent of the workers would wear the device again if provided. The “learning curve” of a worker can be automatically calculated through the SmartHat devices and the proximity to an overhanging load can be visualized in a real-time 3D immersive tool. Effective and efficient learning and training is envisioned in the future to boost safety and productivity performance of workers. The proposed devices have the ability to record historical safety data.

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SmartHat: Self-Monitoring Alert and Reporting Technology for Hazard Avoidance and Training