Hands-free Communication Devices for Construction

Before the advent of the hand-held two-way radios in the middle of the twentieth century, communication on fields was limited to hand signals and human voice. Since that time, the two-way radio, commonly referred to as the walkie-talkie, has been the preferred method of communication between operators of heavy machinery and workers on the ground or high up in a structure, arguably improving the communicative abilities between those parties. However, the need of using a user's hand to trigger a conversation with walkie-talkie has made a tradeoff in the form of less stability and less productive, and a negative impact on safety, especially for the construction tasks to be performed using construction workers' both hands. The ultimate need of a communication device for construction sites is for a system in which two or more people can converse effectively with ease and in a hands-free manner. However, most of the solutions available today, including walkie-talkie and cellular phone, offer answers to part, but not all of that need. In order to identify the exact need of a hands-free communication system on construction jobsites and to quantify how this system can improve construction labor productivity and safety, the authors of this paper have conducted a set of field tests on multiple construction tasks. A questionnaire survey as a follow-up to collect more detailed feedbacks and comments from the construction field personnel involved in the tests has been launched by the authors. This paper describes the implementation and results of the field tests and data collected by the surveys. A comparison between the conventional communication methods and the hands-free system is also presented in this paper. Furthermore, the future of applications of hands-free communication devices on construction is discussed at the end of the paper.