Smart Industry 1/2018

Indoor Tracking
THE HARD HAT JUST
GOT SMART
In the construction world health
and planning, monitoring, and
enforcement relies mostly on
human experts applying knowledge
on an as-needed basis. Because
human error in the project planning
phase can occur and safety plans
are rarely updated once construction
is underway, the conditions in work
spaces must be checked frequently.
Studies show that the health and safety
process remains a key issue. The
fact that about 60,000 construction
worker deaths worldwide occur each
year shows the need for suitable tracking
and control systems.
An interdisciplinary team from the
Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany,
led by Jochen Teizer and Mario Wolf
has set out to create an IoT-based
system involving “smart hard hats,”
specially modified safety helmets that
will help solve these kinds of problems.
As Teizer explains, the goal of
the project is to collect, collate, and
examine tracking and forecasting information
to assist in the identification,
preparation, and execution of each
single step of a work process.
Mario Wolf states that IoT’s power lies
in the ability to interconnect digital
and physical objects, such as 3D
computer models, mobile devices,
machines, and tools, to enable a
broader, smarter range of new applications
and services to be developed.
In the university team’s case, each
“worker” was equipped with smart
personal protective equipment –
hard hats or reflective vests – upon
which sensors had been mounted to
continuously collect environmental
data, such as levels of illumination,
from the surroundings in real time.
These readings were automatically
assigned to individual locations, for
instance from the ID of a work space.
Data sets were collected via the
hat-mounted sensory equipment,
based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE),
as well as through mobile devices,
typically smartphones, connected to
the Internet.
For the helmets, 3D-printed casings
were created to house Avnet’s Visible
Things Bluetooth Smart Sensors,
which allow the collection of environmental
data. The sensor casings were
then mounted on the side plates of
standard industrial hard hats.
By combining the traceability of the
worker’s location with environmental
Jochen Teizer Bochum’s Ruhr University
Constant data collection
Data from the smart hard
hats are collected through
Bluetooth Low Energy
sensors and can be viewed
on smartphones and other
mobile devices
data, the IoT platform is able to monitor
key safety-related parameters, like
time spent in low or high temperatures,
or the lack of adequate lighting
in a work area. For example, some
regions in the basement of a building
under construction often offer some
of the poorest work site conditions.
Accidents in such spaces often lead
to injuries such as sprained ankles,
which results in high costs due to the
enforced absence of workers for days
at a time.
Future work on the project will include
the implementation of an improved
location tracking algorithm, as well as
the introduction of advanced sensory
equipment using communication
over the LoRaWAN low-power wireless
standard.
A new prototype helmet, designated
SmartHat 4.0, will then be the subject
of further field studies on an actual
construction site.
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