VR Device Safely Immerses Workers in on-site Dangers

Brief 

Workers often tune out the continual beep and clang of alarms on construction sites, posing a danger that can lead to accidents. However, experiencing an accident can reawaken workers to the hazard, and a Texas A&M University doctoral candidate has developed a virtual reality device that allows workers to safely explore the consequences.

Insight

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KBTX) – A Texas A&M doctoral candidate has created a virtual reality simulator designed to help construction workers stay safe on the job.

Construction science PhD student Nam Kim says over 100 workers are killed in road work zones every year, but research has found that workers who have already experienced a workplace accident or injury are more sensitive to the hazards surrounding them.

Often times, the alarm beeps and rings on construction vehicles are functional when these workers suffer an accident on the job, Kim says.

“We found that our sensory organs and neuroactivities in our brains are designed so that if there are warning alarms that are constantly ringing around them, they stop paying attention and just focus on their task,” Kim said. “That’s one of the phenomenon that cause workers’ inattentive behavior at hazardous work places.”

That’s why Kim’s simulator has a worker perform a simple road cleaning task around moving construction vehicles so they can experience the consequences of their unsafe behaviors.

“During that time, many construction vehicles continuously move around the worker,” Kim said. “Using eye-tracking sensors, we measure how they respond to the approaching vehicles. If they continuously ignore the approaching construction vehicles, we trigger the accident and make them experience it.”

Kim says the goal is to understand more about how this virtual experience and the warning alarms affects the worker’s sensory responses. That’s why Kim and his team also measured the brain activity of those who used the simulator.

”After experiencing our VR environment, workers’ sensory response to warning alarms significantly increased,” Kim said. “It means that experiencing this VR safety training model influenced their sensory response to warning alarms.”