Blind Spot Measurements for Real-Time Pro-Active Safety in Construction

Equipment related fatalities account for about 25% of all construction fatalities in the United States. One leading indicator for equipment related incidents are blind spots that are prevalent around most construction equipment, inhibiting the operator's visibility of personnel and vital materials on jobsites. Incidents such as injuries and fatalities do occur because operators or ground personnel fail to identify that other objects can be in too close proximity to the work envelope they are operating in. This paper presents a new and unparalleled research approach to help identify the blind spots of equipment in order to quantify and protect the required safety zone(s) for such equipment. An automated blind spot detection tool is presented that determines the equipment blind spots rapidly and in 3D through analyzing the point cloud data from a laser scan inside the equipment cab. Terminology of planar and spatial blind spot measurements are defined and explained. Results to numerous vehicle types that were studied in the construction environment are presented and compared to existing manual and semi-automated methods for similarities. Future work and the applicability of automating the blind spot detection with alert technology in the construction industry are presented.