Understanding Roofer’s Risk Compensatory Behavior through Passive Haptics Mixed-Reality System

Despite substantial efforts to address fall prevention and curb the number of injuries that occur in the construction industry, this sector still experiences the highest fatality rates among all industries. The fact that injuries still occur even after implementing these interventions highlights the need to determine whether providing more safety protection causes an increase in a roofer’s risk-taking behavior, which, in turn, contributes to increasing risk of an injury. Cave automatic virtual environment-based mixed-reality is used to create the perceptions necessary to capture the naturalistic behavior of roofers at a job site. The immersive mixed reality environment consists of a virtual projection of a residential environment and passive haptics feedback of the roof on a 2-story house. Participants were asked to complete a roofing activity under three manipulations (i.e., three levels of protection). A real-time tracking sensor, a physiological sensor, and subjective measures are used to localize worker position, obtain physiological responses, detect at-risk workers, and monitor their risk-taking behavior in each manipulation. This feasibility study enabled the first steps in the discovery of how and why roofers who are equipped with protective equipment may take more risks under hazardous situations. The contribution of this study is significant because it is expected to have immense translational importance in how the industry approaches the control needed post safety interventions.