A Multi-player Virtual Reality-based Education Platform for Construction Safety

Construction is one of the industries with the highest fatality and injuries rate around the world. Studies indicated that human error is one of the key contributors of construction accidents. Although human error is inevitable, construction workers can acquire a range of skills and knowledge to improve the ability to identify and assess risk through training and experience. However, researchers have raised questions about the effectiveness of the existing construction safety training since the industry still remains among the most dangerous to work in. Recent advancement in virtual reality (VR) has offered us with the opportunities for providing a more effective approach for safety training. However, the existing research and applications on VR mainly focused on single user applications with static environments, which cannot fully address the challenges posed by the dynamic and teamwork characteristics of construction projects. In this paper, the authors presented a framework supporting the safety knowledge integration, building information utilization, and multi-user interaction. In the framework, a trainee’s performance can be monitored in real-time and stored in the database to support the training performance analysis. A prototype multi-player VR-based education platform is developed following the proposed framework using Oculus Rift, Unity 5, C# and BIM application. The education platform presented in this paper provides an effective approach for safety training in an immersive environment to simulate the interactions among workers/equipment as well as provides informative and timely feedback for trainee.