HumanTech arrives to develop human-centred construction technologies
The construction industry plays an essential role in the European economy. It contributes to around 9% of the region's GDP and provides 18 million direct jobs and solutions to social, climate and energy challenges. At HumanTech, we aim to help the sector become safer, greener and more competitive by advancing innovative human-centred technologies — from robotic devices and exoskeletons to a new breed of digital twins.
European construction faces challenges affecting its workers, the environment, and business competitiveness.
- Slow technology adoption. The sector is very slow to incorporate new technologies, even though they could help solve many of its problems.
- Workers' safety and productivity. Construction accidents can be severe due to the type of activities workers must carry out, affecting their productivity.
- Shortage of skilled workers, explained by the sector’s low attractiveness for young people and the growing need for specific skills, which education has difficulty satisfying.
- Inefficient use of resources. Buildings account for about 35% of all the EU's greenhouse emissions. The transition to a resource-efficient and low-carbon economy is vital to reduce its negative environmental impact.
How can technology help create practical solutions to these challenges? The 22 partner organizations that make up HumanTech, an ambitious initiative funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe programme, have started to work together to answer this question.
Technology as an ally to provide innovative solutions to construction challenges
HumanTech aims to to enable a safe, green, rewarding and digital work environment for a new generation of highly skilled construction workers and engineers.
These advances will include:
- Robotic devices equipped with vision and intelligence.
- Smart, unobtrusive workers' protection and support equipment.
- A new breed of Dynamic Semantic Digital Twins (DSDTs).
The project will also create resources to spread the knowledge needed to work with these technologies and thus increase the number of qualified workers in the sector.
- Open educational resources on technologies for workers' safety, well-being, and human-robot collaboration in construction.
- Ten training sessions with 200 participants and 1 ‘Train the Trainer’ session for 20 educators and trainers.
We also intend to increase the adoption of exoskeletons in construction by 10x five years after the end of the project, decrease construction worker injuries by 30%, and reduce waste and CO2 emissions from the sector by a minimum of 20%.
We will validate our technologies in in Europe and Japan. These will allow us to evaluate the project’s advances and feed its technical developments.
22 partners, 11 disciplines, 10 countries
started working together on this groundbreaking initiative in June 2022 and will continue to do so over the next three years.
They are leading research institutes and universities, high-tech SMEs, large companies, and construction groups with expertise in disciplines ranging from artificial intelligence to extended reality.
Their multidisciplinarity, complementarity of knowledge and objectives, and excellent track record in research and innovative product development make them the ideal team for this project.
Learn more about HumanTech in our , , follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter, and contact us to explore collaboration opportunities!
*Header image by rawpixel.com on Freepik.
We meet in Germany to launch HumanTech!
Our HumanTech team gathered in Kaiserslautern (Germany) to kick off this ambitious new project in a two-day hybrid meeting. Representatives from the twenty-two organizations working on this initiative — led by the Augmented Vision Department of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) — could get to know each other and learn more about the work we will be doing over the next three years.
About HumanTech
Our goal is to address the most critical challenges faced by the European construction industry today — making it safer, greener and more efficient.
How? By developing . Solutions such as wearables for worker safety and support and intelligent robotic devices that can co-exist with human workers while contributing to the green transition of the industry.
brings together entities from leading research institutes and universities to innovative SMEs and large companies, present in ten countries and with expertise in eleven different areas.
Throughout the project, we want to explore possible synergies with other initiatives, organizations and experts to support the advancements of HumanTech and create a better construction industry. So, if you are interested in collaborating, !
Learn more about HumanTech in our and keep up to date with our progress by following us on social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) and .