- Project number: F 2557
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Completed Project
Description:
The European construction industry faces three major challenges: increasing productivity, improving health and safety in the workplace, and transitioning to more sustainable and eco-friendly processes.
The HumanTech research project has developed new technologies to address these challenges. Taking a human-centred approach, the project has considered new wearable technologies such as exoskeletons and data glasses, as well as intelligent robotic technologies. These technologies support employees in their tasks and enable more efficient construction processes. The research project aimed to achieve technological advances that go beyond the current state of the art, improving the safety and health of construction workers.
The Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, BAuA) central contribution was evaluating the technologies in occupational science context. This included evaluations of human-technology interactions and accompanying surveys. Studies were conducted In real workplaces to provide practical results and enable direct feedback from users. This ensured that the technologies developed during the project would improve work on construction sites in a targeted manner.
The final evaluations showed that users particularly appreciated the physical relief resulting from using the developed technologies. It also became clear that there is significant potential for further technological developments in the construction industry that should be realised in the future. Direct involvement of future users has demonstrated that integrating users into the process from the outset ensures that technologies can be improved for their specific activities.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement N° 101058236.