The daily work of equipment operators on construction sites involves a great deal of physical labour orlong periods of sedentary work, which not only leads to accidents and reduced productivity caused by physical exhaustion or mental fatigue, but also negatively affects the physical and mental health of workers. Based on 4s solutions, Smart Construction Laboratory Ltd. is developing more advanced accessories to refine the smart site safety system, preventing potential site safety accidents and safeguarding the health of frontline workers. The latest research on Smart Cushions and Exoskeleton Suits for construction workers,developed by SCLab, is listed in this blog post.
4S Solutions Application: No.6 Unsafe acts/dangerous situation alert for tower crane lifting zone; No.7 Smart monitoring devices for workers and frontline site personnel.
Authorkeywords: Construction equipment operator; Mental fatigue; Construction safety;Smart cushion; Bidirectional Long-Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM).
The tools currently on the market for assessing whether a sedentary construction equipment operator is mentally fatigued are mainly smart watches, EEG oreye-tracking technologies, which are not only invasive and inconvenient, butalso have serious privacy concerns. SCLab is developing a smart cushion system,which this collects human heartbeat and respiration data via fibre-opticsensors and uses a bi-directional long- and short-term memory (BiLSTM) model torecognise fatigue states. Available experimental results have demonstrated thatthe BiLSTM model achieves 94.0% accuracy.
This smartcushion system has the following advantages:
1. Non-invasive as it no longer requires sensors to be attached to the operator's skin; 2. Insensitive to dynamic lighting conditions and does not create privacy issues; 3. Easy to use as it can be placedon the operator's seat or seat back and does not require an additional power supply.
Therefore, the Smart Cushion System can be integrated into the No.6 Unsafe acts/dangerous situation alert for tower crane lifting zone to monitor workers in the scales who are working at height for long periods of time. Meanwhile, the Smart Cushion System can also be extended to No.8 Smart monitoring devices for workers and frontline site personnel to be used in more scenarios.
4S Solutions Application: No.5 Unsafe acts/dangerous situationalert for Mobile Plant Operation Area; No.7 Smart monitoring devices forworkers and frontline site personnel.
Back exoskeletons are promising wearable assistive devices that share the loadsplaced on the lower back by providing an external force. However, existing exoskeletons suffer from limitations such as large size, heavy weight, poor adaptability, and high cost, which make them unsuitable for construction workers. SCLab is developing a light weight active soft back exoskeleton suit designed specifically for construction workers to help prevent overexertion during heavy lifting tasks. This exoskeleton suit utilises compress edgas-powered artificial muscles that are lightweight, compact in size, flexible,well ventilated, and low-cost. And the exoskeleton suit has been tested and proven to be effective in reducing electromyographic (EMG) signals in the longest muscle (LG) and multifidus (MF). As such, this exosuit has great potential for construction management, offering significant benefits inpreventing low back pain in workers and curbing associated economic losses and labour decline.
· Established in 2023
· Derived from the 20-year history of the PolyU Smart Construction Laboratory, HK
· Landlink's First-Generation Prouct
