Dive Brief:
- The National Science Foundation awarded a three-year, $650,000 grant to a team of university researchers from Penn State and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with the aim of improving the safety and efficiency of construction equipment, the Penn State News reported.
- Manitowoc Cranes and HIGH Steel Structures, Inc., will provide the cranes and research sites, and the project will begin January 2016, first focusing on mobile cranes, which have been involved in recent construction site accidents, the News reported.
- The team's goal is to be able to deliver real-time changes in the construction environment, using cameras and sensors, to crane operators so that blind spots and other site hazards are reduced or eliminated.
Dive Insight:
The research team is comprised of engineers from the two schools in collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers.
"Among commonly used equipment, cranes account for a larger share of accidents," Chimay Anumba, head and professor of architectural engineering at Penn State, told the News. "In crane-related accidents, the most frequent cause of worker injury or death is crane collapses at 39%, followed by contact with overhead power lines at 14%, impacts by crane loads at 14%, and impacts by other crane parts at 14%."
Anumba told the News that feeding real-time information to crane operators would increase safety on a construction site and help to reduce accidents.
"One thing that makes a site unsafe is that constantly changing and dynamic environments can create problems," Anuma said. "For instance, traffic flows change as the work goes on. Providing equipment operators with updates in real time will have huge safety implications.”