Investigating the Cognition-Control Pattern of Multi-Worker Human-Robot Collaboration in Construction

When operating a construction robot (e.g., excavator), the operator’s unsafe behavior directly affects the safety risk (e.g., underground utility damage occurrence during excavation process). Operators’ behavior is greatly influenced by the surrounding environment and further the communication with other coworkers (i.e., spotter), and thus there is a need for studying human factors during work by investigating how the operator-spotter interaction affects the operator when performing the task in a challenging work environment. In this paper, we investigate how the different levels of environmental complexities and operator-spotter communication channels affect operators’ performance and the accident occurrence during work. A human-centered experiment is designed and conducted in environmentally realistic scenarios based on immersive virtual reality. The task of operating a virtual excavator as well as the interaction between the operator and a spotter are performed in realistic jobsites in which a series of environmental stimuli are modeled and simulated. Operators’ cognitive responses and work performance are assessed by subjective evaluations and instrument-based measurements (i.e., eye-tracking). This study can establish a better understanding about the effectiveness of between-worker communication and worker-to-robot interaction during robot operation as well as the influence of environmental visual and auditory stimuli on the teleoperator.