Providing proximity alerts to workers on construction sites using Bluetooth Low Energy RTLS

Construction is one of the most dangerous industrial sectors. Struck-by object or equipment is one of the main causes of fatal accidents on construction sites. Although many regulations have been designed for preventing struck-by accidents, they still happen and lead to many injuries and fatalities. The application of real-time location systems (RTLS) on construction sites provides new possibilities in construction safety management. Previous researchers have proposed using RTLS to track the locations of workers and equipment on construction sites to improve construction safety. However, they have the limitation of cabling problems. Also, providing effective safety alerts to workers within dangerous proximity to equipment has not been well addressed. This paper aims to develop a method for detecting the proximities as well as providing proximity safety alerts to workers on construction sites using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) RTLS. Here, vibro-tactile alerts representing different cases of proximities were defined. Unnecessary alerts were filtered out to avoid desensitizing workers. A number of tests were conducted on a construction site to test the prototype system developed based on the proposed method. The results indicate that the system is capable of detecting proximities and generating timely vibro-tactile alerts, which can be easily perceived by the workers.