Untethered Ultra-Wideband-Based Real-Time Locating System for Road-Worker Safety

Area of Science:

• Civil Engineering
• Occupational Safety and Health
• Wireless Sensor Networks

Background:

• Road construction and maintenance pose significant accident risks to workers.
• Existing safety systems often focus on vehicle detection, neglecting worker behavior.
• Distracted workers deviating from safe zones is a critical safety concern.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel, untethered real-time locating system (RTLS) for enhanced road worker safety.
• To address the issue of distracted workers leaving predefined safe zones.
• To develop a simple-to-deploy safety system with reduced setup time and high accuracy.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of an ultra-wideband (UWB) based RTLS to track worker locations in real time.
• Integration of UWB anchors within existing safety cones for untethered deployment (no cables for power, synchronization, or data).
• Development of a novel self-positioning approach for automatic anchor and safe zone boundary determination.

Main Results:

• The proposed system accurately tracks workers and identifies deviations from safe zones.
• Untethered UWB anchors placed in safety cones eliminate the need for manual positioning.
• Automatic determination of anchor positions and safe/danger zones significantly reduces deployment time.
• Achieved an overall system accuracy of 97%.

Conclusions:

• The novel untethered RTLS offers a significant advancement in road worker safety solutions.
• Simplified deployment through self-positioning and integrated anchors drastically cuts setup time.
• The system effectively mitigates risks associated with workers leaving designated safe areas, improving overall site safety.