Enabling near-real-time safety glove detection through edge computing and transfer learning: comparative analysis of edge and cloud computing-based methods

Purpose: Computer vision and deep learning (DL) methods have been investigated for personal protective equipment (PPE) monitoring and detection for construction workers' safety. However, it is still challenging to implement automated safety monitoring methods in near real time or in a time-efficient manner in real construction practices. Therefore, this study developed a novel solution to enhance the time efficiency to achieve near-real-time safety glove detection and meanwhile preserve data privacy. Design/methodology/approach: The developed method comprises two primary components: (1) transfer learning methods to detect safety gloves and (2) edge computing to improve time efficiency and data privacy. To compare the developed edge computing-based method with the currently widely used cloud computing-based methods, a comprehensive comparative analysis was conducted from both the implementation and theory perspectives, providing insights into the developed approach's performance. Findings: Three DL models achieved mean average precision (mAP) scores ranging from 74.92% to 84.31% for safety glove detection. The other two methods by combining object detection and classification achieved mAP as 89.91% for hand detection and 100% for glove classification. From both implementation and theory perspectives, the edge computing-based method detected gloves faster than the cloud computing-based method. The edge computing-based method achieved a detection latency of 36%–68% shorter than the cloud computing-based method in the implementation perspective. The findings highlight edge computing's potential for near-real-time detection with improved data privacy. Originality/value: This study implemented and evaluated DL-based safety monitoring methods on different computing infrastructures to investigate their time efficiency. This study contributes to existing knowledge by demonstrating how edge computing can be used with DL models (without sacrificing their performance) to improve PPE-glove monitoring in a time-efficient manner as well as maintain data privacy.