Using motion capture technology to reduce workplace injuries in construction
At HumanTech, one of our main goals is to reduce workplace injuries by 30% in the construction industry. Our partners at SINTEF are building on the motion-capture technology developed by Sci-Track to improve construction workers' safety and well-being and provide services for human-robot collaboration.
This technology can be used to both obtain information about the workers on a construction site and provide them with helpful information for executing their work. For example, it can predict whether a person is at risk of injury and inform them where they should or should not go to avoid it.
How does this technology work? How are we using it at HumanTech? We have spoken with our partner Markus Miezal, Researcher at Sci-Track, to better understand it.
Markus Miezal, Researcher at Sci-Track, is wearing a motion capture suit to show how this innovative technology works in real-time.
Q: Markus, can you explain to us what this technology is and how it works?
A: I'm wearing a suit from the Japanese company Xenoma, which includes 18 inertial measurement units. The sensors provide measurements of linear acceleration (including gravity), rotational velocity and a magnetic field measurement (i.e. a 3D compass). We all have such sensors in our smartphones, which can detect screen rotation, for example.
Our technology uses statistical sensor fusion based on a human biomechanical model to estimate the user's kinematics from the measurements.
Q: How interesting! For what purpose are you developing it? And how will it contribute to HumanTech's objectives?
A: We will use it to track construction workers and provide the kinematics to the exoskeleton from our partners at Tecnalia so that they can identify the user's intention and control the exoskeleton accordingly.
Another option yet to be explored is to also use it in the delivery tasks of the bricklayer and the robot. We will integrate it with the Theta 360° camera from our partners at Ricoh to provide visual-inertial tracking of the human body.
"We will use this technology to track construction workers and provide the kinematics to the exoskeleton from our partners at Tecnalia so that they can identify the user's intention and control the exoskeleton accordingly".
Q: Who will be able to use it, and could you give us an example of a practical, real-life case where it could be used?
A: Due to the shortage of sensors on the market, we will only be able to create a few suits for HumanTech. Apart from the construction sector, our product has been used in rehabilitation and for the ergonomic analysis of factory workers. Motion capture is also a well-known application.
Q: What stage of development are you at, and what are your next steps?
A: We have a working product, but our extensions, in particular the integration of the camera, are planned for August. We are building on existing publications in this field and are currently working on the device calibration process.
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Next steps at HumanTech: Our plans for 2023
It is February 2023, and we are in the ninth month of our project to transform construction into a safer, more inclusive and greener industry.
In December, the three things that Jason Rambach, our Project Coordinator, highlighted from our first six months of progress were:
- We have started our field activities by collecting a large-scale multisensory building 3D point cloud dataset.
- We have gained recognition for our research, receiving awards at the European Computer Vision Conference (ECCV) and the Best Paper Award at the European Council on Computing in Construction (EC³).
- We have participated in our first events and made our first media appearances, allowing us to disseminate our work to a broader public.
"In the coming months, we will continue to work on our technical work packages for the generation of digital building twins, construction wearables and robotics. We look forward to making some of our newly acquired building data available to the scientific community", said Jason.
We are also very excited to organise our first workshop at the European Robotics Forum with two other Horizon Europe projects in the construction field, RoBétArmé and BEEYONDERS, on March 15th.
Where are we now in development? What are our plans for this new stage of the project? We spoke to the Work Package leaders that make up HumanTech, and this is what they told us.
Work Package 1: Overall Framework Definition
Jason Rambach, HumanTech Project Coordinator and Senior Researcher and Team Leader in Spatial Sensing and Machine Perception at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI): For Work Package 1, we will be happy to present our public deliverable on the "HumanTech Vision and research requirements" very soon. Planned for March 2023, it contains inputs based on the expertise of many of our project partners. It will paint an accurate picture of the current state of digital twins, wearables and robotics in construction as well as our plans for advancing the state-of-the-art in HumanTech. Additionally, after several long discussions, we have established a first version of our HumanTech architecture at the system and data level, which we will present in deliverable D1.2."
"The deliverable we are working on will paint an accurate picture of the current state of digital twins, wearables and robotics in construction, as well as our plans for advancing the state-of-the-art in HumanTech."
Work Package 2: BIMxD Formats and Standardization
Andrea Giordano, Professor at the Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering - ICEA, Università degli Studi di Padova: "The activities of the Work Package 2 are based on the development of the standardisation of the HumanTech activities, based on international standards. Our plans for the next months are related to the creation of the platform's main characteristic and to the definition of the exchange requirements of the other Work Packages. The standardisation of the process and the data using the buildingSmart data dictionary (bSDD) are, in fact, related to the kind of information that can be reused from the BIM models and the point cloud segmentation for an optimisation of the resource. The group members' collaboration will allow us to organise the dedicated platform."
Work Package 3: Dynamic Semantic Digital Twin Generation
Bharath Sankaran, CTO and Co-founder of Naska.AI: "On the one hand, while our team at RICOH will continue improving and testing their RGB-D sensor prototype, ZHAW and Naska.AI will develop their Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) data capture platforms, and work together to integrate the RICOH Theta 360 camera. The platforms and sensors will be tested and evaluated throughout the year on real construction sites provided by our Work Package 3 partners, Acciona and Implenia.
On the other hand, led by DFKI, other partners will work on developing semantic segmentation algorithms, using the data collected with our sensors to train their machine-learning algorithms.
Finally, RPTU (formerly TUK - Technical University of Kaiserslautern), will continue developing algorithms to turn pointclouds and semantic information into BIM models."
Work Package 4: Wearable Technologies for Construction
Bruno Mirbach, Senior Researcher at DFKI: "In Work Package 4, we are developing a wearable visual-internal-sensor system. A surround-view camera developed by RICOH will be integrated with the body sensing system of Sci-Track. The combination of these sensors enables both a simultaneous monitoring of the environment and localisation of the worker therein and a precise and robust 3D-tracking of the workers' postures and movements.
The next step in Work Package 4 will be to develop an intention recognition based on this information and to implement an action-dependent automatic activation of an exoskeleton, which supports the worker in specific physically stressful actions."
"The technology we are developing enables both a simultaneous monitoring of the environment and localisation of the worker therein and a precise and robust 3D-tracking of the workers' postures and movements."
Work Package 5: Construction Robotics and Human-Robot Collaboration
Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF: "Work Package 5 started on 1st November 2022 and is progressing with rapid steps. Baubot started to build the new generation of Mobile Collaborative Robotic System (called MRS5-1920), while the rest of the partners involved are focusing on the research and development of the necessary parts for the robotic platform and the pilots, building up the HumanTech vision.
The Work Package 5 team met on the 1st February 2023 in Madrid, Spain, to get hands-on experience with two of our planned pilots (bricklaying and mastic application) and is arranging a Special Session on the 19th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Its Social Impacts, which will take place in Berlin, Germany, June 5th-7th 2023. Meet us there!"
Work Package 6: Human Factors - Training and Usability Assessment
Gloria Callinan, Project Support Officer at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS): "At TUS, we continue to work with our project partners on curricula for micro-learning units, the first of which should be ready in Q1 2024.
Our partners at Tecnalia are preparing the subjective assessment for the technologies being developed in HumanTech through dedicated workshops with final users to measure a worker's acceptance degree and how the perceived usefulness can improve it. This assessment will be done by the own workers, designers and researchers.
Our main goal? To celebrate one workshop with 40 workers (20 male and 20 female). The material for moderators participating in the focus groups has been prepared with self-exploration questionnaires to measure the experiential users' objectives and interaction. It will be analysed afterwards and conclusions will be drawn."
Work Package 7: Pilots, Evaluation and Validation
Fabian Kaufmann, Researcher at RPTU: "At Work Package 7, we are leading the use case coordination with Work Packages 2, 3, 4, and 5. As the research tasks are now starting, there is a lot of coordination necessary.
As Gabor has mentioned, we visited one of our pilot sites on the 1st February in Madrid and were able to check the site conditions, challenges and opportunities for pilot implementation. Also, we are analysing manual tasks such as bricklaying and mastic application collaboratively with other Work Packages and will continue to schedule and plan our activities for the coming months!"
Work Package 8: Outreach, Exploitation and Collaboration
Giulia Pastor, Project Manager at AUSTRALO: "On Work Package 8, we are coordinating with our sister projects, BEEYONDERS and RoBétArmé, to promote our first workshop, "AI and Robotics in Construction", which will be held on March 15th at the European Robotics Forum (ERF) 2023.
"We are pushing the promotion of our first workshop, "AI and Robotics in Construction", which we have organised with our sister projects, BEEYONDERS and RoBétArmé, during the European Robotics Forum 2023 and will take place on March 15th."
Our first technical publication, in which our Project Coordinator, Jason Rambach, has participated, is available: "OPA-3D: Occlusion-Aware Pixel-Wise Aggregation for Monocular 3D Object Detection."
We are continuing our series of interviews with the HumanTech team to learn about their work and share their vision of the positive impact we will generate with this ambitious project. In addition, we are working on a campaign on gender equality in the digital and technological environment on the occasion of the upcoming International Women's Day 2023, whose theme is "DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality".
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If you want to be part of our journey and explore collaboration opportunities with us, we’re all ears!
HumanTech Publication: OPA-3D - Occlusion-Aware Pixel-Wise Aggregation for Monocular 3D Object Detection
Dive into our first scientific publication, "OPA-3D: Occlusion-Aware Pixel-Wise Aggregation for Monocular 3D Object Detection", accepted in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) journal.
Abstract
Monocular 3D object detection has recently made a significant leap forward thanks to the use of pre-trained depth estimators for pseudo-LiDAR recovery. Yet, such two-stage methods typically suffer from overfitting and are incapable of explicitly encapsulating the geometric relation between depth and object bounding box. To overcome this limitation, we instead propose to jointly estimate dense scene depth with depth-bounding box residuals and object bounding boxes, allowing a two-stream detection of 3D objects that harnesses both geometry and context information. Thereby, the geometry stream combines visible depth and depth-bounding box residuals to recover the object bounding box via explicit occlusion-aware optimization. In addition, a bounding box based geometry projection scheme is employed in an effort to enhance distance perception. The second stream, named as the Context Stream, directly regresses 3D object location and size. This novel two stream representation enables us to enforce cross-stream consistency terms, which aligns the outputs of both streams, and further improves the overall performance. Extensive experiments on the public benchmark demonstrate that OPA-3D outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the main Car category, whilst keeping a real-time inference speed.
Authors
Yongzhi Su and Didier Stricker - German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), RPTU Kaiserslautern
Yan Di, Guangyao Zhai, and Benjamin Busam - Technical University of Munich
Fabian Manhardt - Google
Jason Rambach - German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)
Federico Tombari - Technical University of Munich, Google
Keywords
Computer vision for transportation, deep learning for visual perception, object detection.
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Meet the HumanTech team: Francesca Canale, convinced that HumanTech technologies will enable a more inclusive construction industry
Get to know Francesca Canale, Project Engineer at STAM. A robotics engineer passionate about artificial intelligence, machine vision, robot programming, and automation.
"Introducing HumanTech technologies in construction sites can empower and support workers, resulting in improved working conditions. This would lead to a more inclusive and diverse workforce, making the construction industry more appealing to women and young people."
Q: Francesca, tell us a little about yourself. Wat aspect of your profession do you enjoy the most?
A: As a robotics engineer, I enjoy challenging myself, experimenting with new concepts, and constantly learning new things about the ever-evolving world of robotics. Among the topics that I find most fascinating are artificial intelligence, machine vision, robot programming, and automation in general.
"As a robotics engineer, I enjoy challenging myself, experimenting with new concepts, and constantly learning new things about the ever-evolving world of robotics."
Q: Interesting! And about your company, what is its main mission? What is the team involved in HumanTech?
A: STAM is a private engineering company based in Genoa, Italy. Our main mission is to provide engineering services to industries and to support our clients in addressing new businesses and technology challenges. The enthusiasm and the experience of our staff is our most valuable asset.
The STAM team directly involved in the HumanTech project is the Robotics and Mechatronics one, which is active in several R&D projects concerning topics such as collaborative robotics, AI-based image processing, robotic sorting and augmented reality.
Q: Great. Now, tell us about your role at HumanTech. What do you do and what is the most rewarding thing about it?
A: We contribute to the HumanTech project mainly by leading task 5.1 (“Development of the ontology for demolition task planning”), which deals with developing a robotic task planner for the automatic execution of demolition activities.
The most rewarding aspect for me is to have the opportunity to apply my robotics knowledge in a domain which is entirely new to me: the construction industry.
Q: What is the activity you are developing that excites you the most?
A: I think the most exciting activity will be to demonstrate our technologies on actual construction sites. In particular, we will validate our demolition task planner in scenarios involving cutting openings in existing walls during building renovations. This task, which is typically carried out using human-operated tools and exposes workers to hazardous conditions, will be performed autonomously with our HumanTech demolition robot and overseen remotely by a human operator.
Q: That sounds exciting. To conclude, what is the positive impact you hope to generate through this project?
A: I believe that introducing HumanTech technologies in construction sites can empower and support workers, resulting in improved working conditions. This would lead to a more inclusive and diverse workforce, making the construction industry more appealing to women and young people. I consider this one of the most significant and impactful outcomes that HumanTech aims to achieve.
Learn more about our work at HumanTech and the team behind it.
Know Jason Rambach, our project coordinator from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Bharath Sankaran, CTO and Co-founder of Scaled Robotics, Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF, Gloria Callinan, Project Support Officer at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), Fabian Kaufmann, Researcher at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU), and Florendia Fourli, CEO and Managing Director of Hypercliq.
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Meet the HumanTech team: Florendia Fourli, passionate about innovation, technology, and creative problem solving
Florendia Fourli is the CEO and Managing Director of Hypercliq, a company specialising in AI-powered solutions for data management. She founded it in 2011, together with Mirco Sanguineti, CTO, and George Kartsounis, R&D coordinator.
"We help companies collect and create value from data by developing large-scale data management platforms that allow them to visualise and analyse data to make better decisions and provide innovative services to their clients."
In this interview, she explains the work her team is doing at HumanTech, the positive impact they expect it to have and her views on the viability of a net zero future for the construction industry.
Keep on reading!
Q: To start with, can you tell us a bit about your background, what you are passionate about and what drives you personally and professionally?
A: I have an MSc in Artificial Intelligence and a BSc in Computer Science, and I've taken on many roles in the IT industry over the past 20 years, including AI researcher, software developer, and project manager. I'm passionate about innovation, technology, and creative problem-solving and challenges that require mental shifts and continuous learning drive me both professionally and personally.
Q: That sounds very interesting and ambitious. Now, tell us about your company, Hypercliq. What is its role in HumanTech?
A: Our role is to design and support HumanTech’s overall System Architecture. This will be the glue that binds all the innovative technologies our partners are working on into a cohesive, integrated whole that can provide value to the construction sector while making it safer and greener. Our team also manages the intellectual property rights created in the consortium to ensure their protection and the unimpeded exploitation of the project results.
Q: And what is the most rewarding thing about your work on the project?
A: The most rewarding is closely following the research going into the various innovative components to facilitate their integration into the HumanTech System at later project stages.
Q: We look forward to seeing how your work develops once the project progresses further. In particular, what are the activities that excite you the most? And what is the positive impact you think they can generate in the construction sector?
A: Analysing the various interactions and interfaces between humans, robots and wearables and defining the interoperability modules that will enable them is very exciting, as it can have a big impact on the safety and well-being of construction workers. In addition, establishing links between the digital representation and the physical aspects of construction sites is an activity with great potential to add value, not only to the construction industry but also to other sectors where it can be applied.
I hope we will create a system that protects and empowers its workers while also improving efficiency in using resources and lowering the environmental impact of the construction industry.
"I hope we will create a system that protects and empowers its workers while also improving efficiency in using resources and lowering the environmental impact of the construction industry."
Q: Q: Sounds great! What are the next milestones you hope to achieve?
A: We are actually very close to achieving an important milestone, which is the first version of the HumanTech System Architecture. After this, we hope to be efficient in refining it and implementing the required interfaces for the system to come together as an integrated solution.
Q: Well, good luck with the work ahead of you! We would like your opinion on the feasibility of the construction industry becoming net zero.
A: Construction errors and nonoptimal material usage contribute greatly to excess waste and CO2 emissions. Technological innovations being developed in HumanTech, such as digital twin monitoring and data sharing on-site, can greatly reduce these aspects and allow us to envision a net zero future.
"Technological innovations being developed in HumanTech, such as digital twin monitoring and data sharing on-site, allow us to envision a net zero future for the construction industry."
Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges to achieving it? And the keys?
A: The biggest challenges lie with the adoption of these technologies by the industry. The key is introducing technologies that keep humans in the centre and in control, which is exactly the aim of HumanTech.
Q: That's right. We hope our innovations make a great difference and contribute to accelerating the green transformation in the sector while making it safer for its workers. Finally, can you tell us about other projects aiming to make the industry safer and more sustainable you have worked on that have inspired you?
A: BIONIC was a project my team worked on, which focused on developing smart wearables for construction workers. BIMprove is another project that has laid the groundwork for HumanTech.
Learn more about our work at HumanTech and the team behind it.
Know Jason Rambach, our project coordinator from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Bharath Sankaran, CTO and Co-founder of Scaled Robotics, Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF, Gloria Callinan, Project Support Officer at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), and Fabian Kaufmann, Researcher at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU).
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AI and Robotics in Construction: Workshop at the European Robotics Forum 2023
At HumanTech, we are organising a workshop during the European Robotics Forum 2023 on AI and Robotics in Construction.
🗓️ Date and time: 15 March 2023, 11:05-12:25 (GMT+1 / CET)
📍 Location: Odeons Kvarter 1, 5000 Odense C - Odense, Denmark
We are delighted to invite you to the AI and Robotics in Construction workshop we have organised with our sister projects BEEYONDERS and RoBétArmé, also part of the European Commission's Horizon Europe programme, during the European Robotics Forum 2023 (ERF2023) — the most influential event of the robotics community in Europe.
The workshop will take place on 15 March from 11:05 until 12:25 in Odense, Denmark.
We aim to debate the following key aspects:
- What are the most critical applications for AI and robotics in construction, and which are the main technological challenges that need to be addressed in this scope?
- What are the essential benefits of AI and robotics in construction? Is the future full robotic automation or human-robot collaboration?
- How can construction companies and workers take advantage of the solutions offered by these technologies, and what concrete steps do they need to take in the coming years to do so?
We will discuss the potential benefits of AI and robotics for achieving automation in construction based on the research and development activities we are carrying out at HumanTech, RoBétArmé, and BEEYONDERS. After briefly presenting our three projects, we will address key aspects of this topic: from the benefits and challenges of integrating these technologies into construction sites to their impact on efficiency, waste and emissions reduction and increased safety in the sector.
In addition, partners from industrial projects will share lessons learned and best practices, focusing on the end-users view of AI and robotics in construction. Finally, there will be a panel discussion and feedback rounds with the attendees, where we will delve deeper into the key questions of the workshop.
We will be joined by:
- Dr. Dimitrios Biliouris, Project Adviser, European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA)
- Dr. Dimitrios Giakoumis, RoBétArmé project Coordinator
- Dr. Jason Rambach, HumanTech project Coordinator
- Antonio Alonso Cepeda, Beeyonders project Coordinator
- Jonas Bentzen and Mads Essenbaek, Project Manager and Leader, respectively, Christiansen & Essenbæk A/S
- Fernando Sigchos Jiménez, Secretary General, European Builders Confederation
- Patrick Roth, New Business and Innovation Manager, Implenia
- Dr. Bharath Sankaran, CTO & Co-founder, Naska.AI
- Dr. Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager, SINTEF
- Mr. José Carlos Jiménez Fernández, Civil Engineer, Tecnalia
- Dr. Francisco Javier Pérez Grau, Head of Perception and AI, FADA CATEC
Join us!
Register nowDownload the full agendaJoin the discussion
*Update: Find out how the workshop went in this article!
The European Builders Confederation at HumanTech
The European construction industry faces three major challenges: improve its productivity, increase the safety and well-being of its workforce and make a shift towards a green, resource-efficient industry.
In the wake of these needs, the European Builders Confederation (EBC) decided to join 21 other organisations led by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence’s (DFKI) Augmented Vision department in the new ambitious project HumanTech, falling under the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
HumanTech, aims at developing Human Centered Technologies for a safer and greener European Construction Industry and will run for a period of 36 months with a consortium made up of leading research institutes and universities, innovative hi-tech SMEs and large enterprises, construction groups and construction SME representatives from 10 countries contributing with 11 different expertise.
EBC is eager to contribute to HumanTech’s objective of following the trail of the twin transitions towards a greener and more digitalized construction sector, proposing a human-centred approach, involving breakthrough technologies such as wearables for worker safety and support, and intelligent robotic technology that can harmoniously co-exist with human workers while also contributing to the green transition of the industry.
Against this background, it must be borne in mind that these new technologies must then be easily accessible and usable by SMEs, as they are the backbone of the European construction sector representing 99.9% of the market.
"The European Builders Confederation (EBC) will be involved in the usability assessment of the impact of the identified technologies on construction SMEs, in promoting the awareness of such solutions and in developing a new approach to training for the upskilling of the current and future workforce."
For the sake of that, EBC will be involved in the usability assessment of the impact of the identified technologies on construction SMEs, in promoting the awareness of such solutions and in developing a new approach to training for the upskilling of the current and future workforce.
What is more, thanks to its position, EBC will play a key role in the EU-wide dissemination of the main projects’ findings in the European Construction community and in building partnerships and synergies with other relevant initiatives and projects.
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Meet the HumanTech team: Gloria Callinan, passionate about sustainability and collaboration
Meet the exciting Gloria Callinan, who, after having worked on European project development and project management for 22 years, joined the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) as a Project Support Officer in August 2021.
"While my background is in community development and sustainable energy, I am extremely privileged to work at TUS and now at HumanTech! I will work hard with the rest of the TUS team to create a suite of new micro-learning units for a safer, greener, more efficient and carbon-neutral construction industry."
We spoke with her to learn more about her background and role in HumanTech. This is what she told us:
Q: To start with, what are you passionate about, and what is your professional background?
A: I am passionate about supporting sustainability at individual household, community, local and national levels.
Before joining TUS, I worked on LEADER, a well-known, hugely successful EU-funded rural development programme, in Ireland. It was focused on supporting communities and SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) to develop at a sustainable pace, fostering greater local employment and encouraging entrepreneurship, enhancing biodiversity and ecological protection and funding resilient, self-sufficient communities and local community-led economic, environmental and social development.
In my previous role, I also worked as a sustainable energy communities mentor, whereby local communities signed up for a government-supported programme for energy resilience and were offered mentoring support by a community development expert.
For TUS, I work on several funded programmes in sustainable construction skills, including Construction Blueprint (ERASMUS), BUSGoCircular (Horizon) and Green Public Procurement (ERASMUS).
Under these programmes, new and innovative training content is developed by TUS and piloted across European partner countries to a variety of actors in the construction value chain. For example, construction apprentices, SMEs, professionals seeking upskilling opportunities and educators ("train the trainer" programmes).
Targets for reducing carbon emissions across Europe are real and must be realised at speed. I know that green skills training in construction is a very real way to achieve this.
"Targets for reducing carbon emissions across Europe are real and must be realised at speed. I know that green skills training in construction is a very real way to achieve this."
While my background is in community development and community energy, I am extremely privileged to work at TUS and now at HumanTech! I will work hard with the rest of the TUS team to create a suite of new micro-learning units for a safer, greener, more efficient and carbon-neutral construction industry.
Q: Thanks a lot for telling us more about yourself. At HumanTech, we are delighted to have you and the TUS team on board, and you are doing a fantastic job! Can you tell us more about TUS and its focus, the department you are part of and the team you work with at HumanTech?
A: TUS is a relatively new organisation, having been established in 2021 as a result of two institutes of technology merging, previously known as the Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT).
The TUS department involved directly with HumanTech is the Development Unit based in Thurles, County Tipperary, Ireland. The Unit has a long-standing track record of over 25 years in European project participation and construction skills projects.
I work on HumanTech with Dr Liam Brown, TUS Vice President for Research, Development and Innovation, Padraic O'Reilly, Development Unit Manager, and Martin Breen, Researcher. As tasks evolve, we will bring other staff experts from various disciplines and faculties to work on and contribute to content for the HumanTech micro-learning units' design and development.
The Development Unit is dedicated to implementing our vision of supporting individuals, companies and industries to achieve social, economic and environmental changes by applying its expertise collaboratively.
"The Development Unit is dedicated to implementing our vision of supporting individuals, companies and industries to achieve social, economic and environmental changes by applying its expertise collaboratively."
We pride ourselves on working with people to solve real problems and challenges.
With a focus on sustainable energy, climate action, social enterprise, rural development and technology for education, our team leads and partners in projects and activities while working closely with academic staff and experts across the University.
We have a particular strength in securing funding from an array of EU programmes (H2020, Interreg, Erasmus+, COSME and others), both as coordinators and as partners/co-beneficiaries. Our dynamic team has extensive experience in proposal development and works in an agile environment to respond to specific partnership needs and requirements.
Q: Wow! How interesting, Gloria. It's inspiring to know that you are tackling today's vital social, environmental and economic challenges. Can you tell us more about your role at HumanTech in particular? What do you (and your team) do, and what activity/outcome excites you most?
A: We lead work package 6: Human Factors - Training and Usability Assessment, and in it, task 6.1.: Micro-learning units development and coordination, a role we are very excited about.
As educators, we will use our expertise to identify and design new training content for Task 6.1, resulting in new content for the education sector — the project outcome we will contribute to that we are most enthusiastic about. At least 200 construction professionals will be trained on this content, which is a significant added value for the project.
"We will identify and design new training content for the education sector. At least 200 construction professionals will be trained on this content, which is a significant added value for the project."
We will draft the content of the micro-learning units taking into account our partners' feedback and the best practices in Europe, and draw on the lessons learned from HumanTech's pilot projects and other work packages. With my colleague Martin Breen, I am also developing a train-the-trainer programme, and we will support our partners in delivering it across their countries.
All the technologies employed in HumanTech will be the subject of training content, including BIM, wearables, drones and robotics.
Q: How will your work improve the construction industry's health, safety and sustainability — making it more attractive to a new generation of highly skilled workers?
A: Training in new technologies and inherent health and safety features will be vital for the construction industry. Training on the importance of health and safety and how digitalisation can help attract workers into construction will be provided to apprentices, tradespeople, SMEs and professionals in construction design teams. The support of our partners will be vital to the success of this initiative.
"Training in new technologies and inherent health and safety features will be vital for the construction industry."
Q: Very ambitious projects are being developed to transform the industry and make it safer and greener. Do you know of any that have inspired you?
A: Yes! Construction Blueprint, a European project belonging to the Erasmus+ Programme, aimed at implementing a new strategic approach to sectoral cooperation on skills. TUS is one of its 24 partners from 12 countries, led by Fundación Laboral de la Construcción (Spain).
The project is due for completion in early 2023 and has resulted in innovative new VET content in digitalisation, circular economy and energy efficiency, piloted to over 600 VET students across 12 countries. The network of participants now training in innovative content, going out into the construction industry trained in EQF 5 digitalisation with an appetite for further learning, gives a great basis for HumanTech to provide upskilling.
Learn more about our work at HumanTech and the team behind it!
Know Jason Rambach, our project coordinator, Bharath Sankaran, from Scaled Robotics, leaders of our work package 3: Dynamic Semantic Digital Twin Generation, and Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF leading HumanTech’s work package 5: Construction Robotics and Human-Robot Collaboration.
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Meet the HumanTech team: Fabian Kaufmann, committed to making the construction industry more efficient and safe
Fabian Kaufmann, Researcher at the Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) — leader of our work package 7: Pilots, Evaluation and Validation — tells us about his purpose, the activities he is working on, what he is more excited about, and his vision for a sustainable and efficient construction industry.
"HumanTech will provide ambitious technical solutions, but we need the ambitious action of the whole European construction sector to transform it into an attractive carbon neutral industry."
Q: Tell us a little about yourself. What is your purpose, professionally and personally?
A: As a trained carpenter, I have always been frustrated about the processes making construction dangerous, inefficient and slow. During my studies and professional life as a researcher, I found BIM and artificial intelligence (AI) to be key instruments for making construction more efficient.
Q: And about your organisation, the University of Kaiserslautern, what is your focus and what have you set out to achieve?
A: Our department, focused on solid construction, aims to provide concrete construction technology for a pathway towards a carbon-neutral resource-efficient construction industry.
Q: Now, let us know about your role at HumanTech. What do you (and your team) do, and what is the most rewarding thing about it?
A: Our team provides construction and engineering expertise to other domains involved in HumanTech, like AI, robotics and wearables. For me, learning about the methods and approaches of other disciplines and bringing everything together for a more sustainable and safe construction industry is the most rewarding thing.
"For me, learning about the methods and approaches of other disciplines and bringing everything together for a more sustainable and safe construction industry is the most rewarding thing."
Q: What activity are you working on that you are most excited about?
A: Delivering a dataset for BIMxD reconstruction is extremely interesting. It is outstanding that we are involved in developing AI methods from the beginning to bring in construction knowledge for the best usability. Also, developing the pilot scenarios is challenging but very interesting since it involves discussions with all disciplines involved.
Q: What positive impact do you hope to generate through this project?
A: I hope we can make the construction industry more efficient and safe and provide solutions to bring reality into digital twins of buildings. It would also be great to move forward in BIMxD reconstruction towards efficient and robust approaches.
"I hope we can make the construction industry more efficient and safe and provide solutions to bring reality into digital twins of buildings."
Q: Is there a net zero future for construction?
A: Absolutely yes. But this needs a completely new mindset and technologies from many disciplines, such as the ones involved in HumanTech. To achieve it, both the end-user and the industry must accept a technology capable of disrupting their business models.
Q: Very ambitious projects are being developed to transform the industry and make it safer and more sustainable. Do you know of any that have inspired you?
A: Definitely, the BIMprove project. I learned a lot from the partners involved. Also, some projects we were involved in (SeRamCo, Cirmap) helped us understand the challenges and the need for an interdisciplinary project such as HumanTech.
Q: Any final words to end on?
A: HumanTech will provide ambitious technical solutions, but we need the ambitious action of the whole European construction sector to transform it into an attractive carbon neutral industry.
Learn more about our work at HumanTech and the team behind it!
Know Jason Rambach, our project coordinator, Bharath Sankaran, from Scaled Robotics, leaders of our work package 3: Dynamic Semantic Digital Twin Generation, Gabor Sziebig, Research Manager at SINTEF leading HumanTech’s work package 5: Construction Robotics and Human-Robot Collaboration, and Gloria Callinan, Project Support Officer at TUS, leading work package 6: Human Factors – Training and Usability Assessment.
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Researchers from RPTU win the Best Paper Award at EC³
Our partners from the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) Fabian Kaufmann, Christian Glock, and Thomas Tschickardt received the Best Paper Award at the 2022 European Council on Computing in Construction (EC³) for their publication on ScaleBIM.
The EC³ is a society of construction professionals, academics, researchers and national Professional Bodies aspiring to become the leading European forum in the area of information technology in construction engineering and management.
Fabian Kaufmann presented the paper "ScaleBIM: Introducing a scalable modular framework to transfer point clouds into semantically rich building information models", an important contribution to the generation of BIMs of existing structures. Thomas Tschickardt presented his contribution, "Lean and BIM based flight planning for automated data acquisition of bridge structures with LiDAR UAV during construction phase", and Christian Glock was Co-author of both publications.
See Fabian Kaufmann's outstanding presentation at EC³ in Rhodes, Greece:
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