Ibrahim, A; Xu, J; Cheon, S; Wang, X and Nnaji, C (2025) Human-robot interaction in dynamic work environment: Implications for workers' situational awareness. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 151(9): 04025133, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
As the construction industry gradually transitions to Industry 5.0 due to the growing integration of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles, the safety risks associated with human-robot interaction (HRI) have become a major concern. The increased dynamism associated with HRI highlights the need to understand the risks and hazards in this new ecosystem. However, limited research assesses the impact of dynamic work environments and HRI on workers' situational awareness (SA). Moreover, a few studies have evaluated the potential role of individual factors when exploring this relationship. This study investigated workers' SA in dynamic construction settings with robots using virtual simulations of critical lift, deep excavation, work at height, and bricklaying operations. Work dynamism and dynamic robotic environment reduced participants' SA by 6.75% and 5.95%, respectively. Work dynamism led to a reduction in participants' hazard recognition performance ranging from 15% to 53%, whereas the dynamic robotic environment resulted in a reduction between 3% and 18%. Conversely, work dynamism caused an increase in safety risk perception (SRP) between 9% and 69%, while the dynamic robotic environment resulted in a variable change in SRP, ranging from a decrease of 28% to an increase of 35%. The present study contributes to construction safety research by providing insight into the relationship between workplace dynamism and SA, thereby providing useful information that could be used to shape safety practices and advance situational HRI research.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | human-robot interaction; situational awareness; work dynamism; worker safety |
| Index terms: | unmanned aerial vehicle, construction industry, interaction, work environment, construction safety, deep excavation, integration, risk perception |
| Subjects: | behavioral psychology, environmental hazards, automation and robotics, environmental health, industry analysis, geotechnical engineering, organizational analysis, management |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Digital Applications, Organizational Design, Engineering Principles, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here