HumanTech was born to address the most important challenges faced by the European construction industry today — making it safer, greener and more efficient. The cutting-edge, human-centred technologies we are developing will transform the sector by increasing the safety and well-being of its workers, improving their productivity and enhancing circular and efficient practices.
With our innovations, we aim at:
- a 10x increase in the adoption of exoskeletons in construction;
- a 30% decrease in construction worker injuries;
- a 50% decrease in safety inspection time;
- an identification rate of fall hazards at 90%;
- and a 20% minimum reduction in waste and CO2 emissions.
HumanTech’s 5 scientific and technological objectives
From a new breed of digital twins to wearable solutions (an exoskeleton or XR glasses) or autonomous demolition and construction site robots, these are the five specific scientific and technological objectives we are targeting.
1. To generate and update a dynamic digital twin of construction sites based on an extended BIM standard
First, a digital twin is a virtual model of a physical object. And Building Information Modeling (BIM) refers to creating and managing information about a built asset throughout its life cycle, from planning and design to construction and operations.
At HumanTech, we will create a digital twin to represent a construction site accurately — both in terms of geometry (through 3D reconstruction) and semantic information (with object-level labels and materials information), focusing on a continuous dynamic update of the model.
The model will form the reference framework for any autonomous robotic solution or XR visualisation we will develop. XR (extended reality) is an umbrella term that rolls into VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality). In a nutshell, “XR technology is any tech that takes your display and makes it more immersive or interacts with your real-world surroundings in some way.”
To develop efficient and accurate methods to generate BIM models, different construction sites will be scanned with autonomous ground and aerial vehicles. We will also use novel hardware solutions, such as a 360-degree spherical camera provided by Ricoh, one of our consortium partners. To process this data, new machine learning methods for semantic segmentation and data alignment will be developed within HumanTech.
Moreover, we will create a new BIM extended Digital Twin (BIMxD) standardisation formulation. It will include additional information to support human-robot collaborative task planning and scheduling, as well as related to worker health and safety.
2. Integrated, lightweight, non-intrusive solutions to improve the safety and health of construction workers and assist them in their tasks
Construction workers often have to put their health at risk to do their job. They are exposed to all kinds of hazards and accidents, many of which are fatal. In 2019, more than a fifth of all fatal accidents at work in the EU took place within the construction sector, according to Eurostat.
One of our primary goals is to improve the safety and lives of construction employees, specifically by reducing their work-related injuries by 30%.
To do so, we will develop lightweight, easy-to-carry and easy-to-use solutions that monitor their health, prevent injuries and support them in dangerous tasks while providing them information with which they can make better decisions.
Our integrated wearable solutions will include:
- an exoskeleton to support workers in strenuous or repetitive tasks and reduce the negative impact they may have on their health;
- a body pose inertial sensor network to track workers’ posture, and guide/activate exoskeleton components;
- XR glasses that will help workers avoid errors by displaying BIM information about the current state of a building;
- and a miniature camera for precise 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) localisation of the XR visualisations for task assistance and to provide contextual information to the inertial sensors and exoskeleton.
3. Semi-autonomous demolition robots supported by remote workers
Demolition is one of the riskiest and unhealthy tasks faced by workers in the sector (for example, due to the inhalation of dust, asbestos or other hazardous materials) and for which human labour is required almost entirely.
At HumanTech, we will automate this activity as much as possible. By doing so, we hope to reduce workers’ health and safety risks and increase productivity in this type of activity.
We will develop a semi-automatic demolition robot that will carry out tasks autonomously. If necessary, a human can operate it remotely in a safe environment and have detailed information to make efficient high-level decisions.
We will optimise demolition planning by using the digital twin as a reference, aiding the collection of reusable material. In addition, the remote operation of the robot will incorporate haptic feedback (referring to the physical response of a virtual action) to the user and demonstration learning principles to improve automation. We will also use specialised 360-degree RGB-D vision cameras on the robot to build an immersive environment for the remote user in a VR environment.
4. Autonomous construction site robots for human support and material transport
Autonomous robots that can easily navigate a construction site are used to support human workers, for example, transporting material or picking up debris. PS’s current solution (BauBot) offers a modular system in its robots that can easily expand their functionalities by adding 3D and vision sensors and machine learning algorithms.
At HumanTech, we want to help construction workers with the most arduous tasks and prevent body postures that can cause long-term deformities (e.g. working on the floor or the ceiling). To this end, we will develop a new generation of autonomous mobile robotic platforms that can work alongside them and take on tasks autonomously.
Specifically, we will create:
- an autonomous and versatile ground robot with sensory systems suitable for safely navigating in dynamic environments;
- a robotic solution with a high payload capacity;
- and a human-machine interface for effectively communicating and identifying construction and demolition waste.
5. Training and usability assessment of our solutions to promote awareness, the acquisition of new skills and the acceptance of users in the construction industry
To achieve the impact we want, construction workers must embrace the HumanTech model. Therefore, we aim to train them from an innovative approach: including BIMxD data transmission and the automatic capture of expert knowledge with wearable cameras that will be transmitted to the trainees with AR tools.
Usability assessment, focusing primarily on wearables (including exoskeletons), will be performed with both traditional and objective methods employing the measurement of the user’s psychophysiological signals (involving mental and bodily processes).
We will collect this knowledge and evaluation through virtual case studies, gamification, videos and on-site training (some of which will be made available as Open Educational Resources — OERs).
In addition, we will design our training resources to ensure greater knowledge about sustainability and circular economy practices applied to construction.
Take a look at our demonstrators to learn more about how we will use these innovations in real construction sites across Europe and Japan.