Development of Arduino microcontroller-based safety monitoring prototype in the hard hat

Abstract

Construction, being one of the most dangerous sectors in the industry, comes with fortuitous or inevitable accidents. Occupational injuries like falling from heights, being hit by falling or moving objects, fatigue related complications, and heat induced illnesses cause construction losses. Despite common safety protocols, construction workers still have a chance of 1-in-200 of dying on the job within the span of a 45- year career making safety an issue of paramount importance for construction contractors to monitor and manage. The main objective of this study is to ergonomically design a hard hat with biometric sensors, an accelerometer, a GPS module, transceivers, a fingerprint scanner, and an emergency button, all connected to Arduino Uno Microcontroller. It monitors the biometrics of the worker, detect external impact forces, know the location, and send distress alert signals during emergencies. By creating a software that presents the wearer's profile with the gathered data, information generated are verified through secondary equipment for necessary calibrations. The prototype was ergonomically designed with a reliable overall performance. Pulse and temperature monitoring acquired overall accuracies of 95.62% and 99.36%, distress alerting with 95%), impact detection, location identification, and fingerprint scanning got 100% through performance analysis. © 2019 ACM.