safeguARd

A study by the BAUA in 2011 showed that more than half of all lethal work-accidents were related to construction vehicles.The construction vehicle manufacturers already try many approaches to keep the potential for hazards as low as possible. However, the main problem - a complex work environment and short-term distractions of the operator - could not be resolved. With this in mind, the use of an intelligent assistance system which supports the machine operator (and does not distract him) and gives him additional information about his work environment is reasonable.

The results of the safeguARd-project can be summarized as follows:

• Enhancement of the safety level of commercial vehicles (especially, fewer accidents with harmed persons) while simultaneously increasing the working speed.
• Improvement of the usability of construction vehicles for persons of all age groups and all restrictions to different senses.

The goal of the project safeguARd is, therefore, the development of an assistance system for commercial vehicles, which detects approaching dangerous situations beforehand, and notifies the operator. The safeguARd-system will be developed and evaluated for a mobile crane. As cranes were responsible for ca. 12% of all lethal work-accidents in 2011. To implement such an assistance system many different research topics need to be tackled:

• The recording of the working situation is done via multiple different sensor technologies (cameras, radar). Therefore, a robust and redundant data collection can be done even in rough and dirty construction sides.
• The different sensors are then fused to generate a virtual scene of the current situation. This is then automatically analyzed to detect hazardous situations and especially localize, classify and predict probable paths of workers in the work environment.
• Afterward, all relevant information will be given to the operator via Augmented-Reality-Technologies.

The use of AR-technology allows enhancing the senses of the operator without restricting his perception of the environment. The main task of the robitcs research lab is the developement of the perception of the assistence system, this includes especially the detection of persons from the boom top.