Critical lifting simulation of heavy industrial construction in gaming environment

Abstract

Purpose Heavy industrial construction often relies on large mobile cranes to erect equipment and pre-assembled modules. Engineering calculations are required for the lifting analysis where lifting capacity is analyzed to ensure the feasibility of the lifting scenarios. Such engineering calculations are often presented in static formats, e.g. two-dimensional or three-dimensional models. However, it is difficult to help practitioners (e.g. lifting engineers, site crews and operators) understand the complexity of the lifting process and thus operational decisions are often made intuitively. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce a game-based simulation system to allow for interactive analysis of the lifting process to improve lifting efficiency and safety. Design/methodology/approach The proposed method treats the mobile crane as a robot with degree-of-freedoms, and the movements are simulated in the Unity game environment. The lifting capacity is calculated dynamically based on the lifting object weight, rigging weight and lifting radius. Findings Compared with the four-dimensional visualization, this development has added a dimension of real-time interactive simulation; this allows the users to understand the complexity and feasibility of the lifting process. Originality/value The developed prototype has been tested and validated using a real case study from a heavy industrial project with the possibility of generalizing crane lifting configurations.

Effectiveness of VR-based training on improving construction workers’ knowledge, skills, and safety behavior in robotic teleoperation

“…For that, in the past two decades, the use of VRbased training for educating construction workers has drawn much attention from construction researchers, especially in aspects related to hazard identification and safety in construction sites [12,32,59], with a more limited number of studies explicitly focusing on vocational training and machine operation training [19,33]. However, construction researchers have just recently started investigating the application of VR-based training in construction robotics, with some prototypes proposed but no validation [60,61].…”

Critical Analysis of the Evaluation Methods of Extended Reality (XR) Experiences for Construction Safety

“…Within the literature that does not perform evaluation, most of the XR developments for safety focus on the design, development, and simulation of the experience. These include topics such as: training in the use and operation of cranes [ 34 , 35 ], postural training [ 36 ], paving operations [ 37 ], among others [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 ]; collision detection [ 44 , 45 ]; prevention of occupational hazards [ 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 ]; and the general topics of construction safety [ 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 ]. Some papers test the operation of the technology in addition to focusing on the development of the experience.…”

A Predictive Analytics Framework for Mobile Crane Configuration Selection in Heavy Industrial Construction Projects

“…The proposed methodology consists of two components, namely the heuristic and ANN, which is based on a cloud-based crane database system that has been developed over years at PCL Industrial Management Inc., in collaboration with the academia. For those who are interested in the details of the developed crane management systems, please refer to previous research work (e.g., [24][25][26][27][28]). As a background, the crane database consists of two sets of data tables for crane-related and project-related information.…”