Dr Ruwini Edirisinghe of RMIT designed a “smart vest” that takes the guesswork out of heat-related workplace safety by alerting construction workers or their supervisors before such problems arise.
Heat stress is a growing safety concern in the building industry and now an innovative smart vest is under development at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, to monitor the health of construction workers in real time.
The vest uses sensors to measure a worker's body temperature and heart rate and sends the data wirelessly to a smartphone app, which instantly alerts users to any anomalies.
Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow in RMIT's School of Property, Construction and Project Management, Dr Ruwini Edirisinghe has been working on the smart vest concept for more than a year. She devised her heat stress vest as part of her research in to improving worker safety. Edirisinghe has plans to extend the smart vest system to include smart glasses, enabling wearers to "see" warnings about the state of their own health and well-being projected right before their eyes.
Source: masonryconstruction.com