Multi-Camera-Based Human Activity Recognition for Human-Robot Collaboration in Construction.

Journal: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
PMID:

Abstract

As the use of construction robots continues to increase, ensuring safety and productivity while working alongside human workers becomes crucial. To prevent collisions, robots must recognize human behavior in close proximity. However, single, or RGB-depth cameras have limitations, such as detection failure, sensor malfunction, occlusions, unconstrained lighting, and motion blur. Therefore, this study proposes a multiple-camera approach for human activity recognition during human-robot collaborative activities in construction. The proposed approach employs a particle filter, to estimate the 3D human pose by fusing 2D joint locations extracted from multiple cameras and applies long short-term memory network (LSTM) to recognize ten activities associated with human and robot collaboration tasks in construction. The study compared the performance of human activity recognition models using one, two, three, and four cameras. Results showed that using multiple cameras enhances recognition performance, providing a more accurate and reliable means of identifying and differentiating between various activities. The results of this study are expected to contribute to the advancement of human activity recognition and utilization in human-robot collaboration in construction.

Authors

  • Youjin Jang
    Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA.
  • Inbae Jeong
    Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA.
  • Moein Younesi Heravi
    Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA.
  • Sajib Sarkar
    Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108, USA.
  • Hyunkyu Shin
    Sustainable Smart City Convergence Educational Research Center, Hanyang University ERICA, Ansan 15588, Republic of Korea.
  • Yonghan Ahn
    Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University ERICA, Ansan 15588, Republic of Korea.