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Drones are increasingly being utilized in the construction industry, offering a wide range of applications. As these drones have to work with or alongside construction professionals, this integration could pose new safety risks and psychological impacts on construction professionals. Hence, it is important to understand their perceptions and attitudes towards drones and evaluate the cognitive demand of working with or near drones. Limited research has explored individuals' perceptions of drones, particularly when engaged in construction activities at job sites. This study specifically targets construction students, the future professionals in the field, to understand their responses to drone interactions on job sites. An immersive virtual reality construction site was developed using a VR game engine, allowing construction students to interact with drones while engaging in typical construction activities. Through a user-centered experiment, the influence of drone presence on construction students' attitude, cognitive workload, and perceived safety risk was evaluated. The results suggest that presence of drones did not significantly elevate cognitive load or foster significantly negative attitudes among construction students. Instead, they perceived only mild safety risks, suggesting a general acceptance and adaptability towards drone technology in construction settings.
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Construction Worker-Drone Safety Training in a 360 Virtual Reality Environment: A Pilot Study
Integrating drones into construction sites can introduce new risks to workers who already work in hazardous environments. Consequently, several recent studies have investigated the safety challenges and solutions associated with this technology integration in construction. However, there is a knowledge gap about effectively communicating such safety challenges to construction professionals and students who may work alongside drones on job sites. In this study, a 360-degree virtual reality (VR) environment was created as a training platform to communicate the safety challenges of worker-drone interactions on construction jobsites. This pilot study assesses the learning effectiveness and user experience of the developed 360 VR worker-drone safety training, which provides an immersive device-agnostic learning experience. The result indicates that such 360 VR learning material could significantly increase the safety knowledge of users while delivering an acceptable user experience in most of its assessment criteria. The outcomes of this study will serve as a valuable resource for improving future worker-drone safety training materials.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2024656
- PAR ID:
- 10345722
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- EPiC Series in Built Environment
- Volume:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2632-881X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 19 - 28
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.29007/8cjv
