Advance Crane Lifting Safety through Real-time Crane Motion Monitoring and Visualization

Monitoring crane motion in real time is the first step to identifying and mitigating crane-related hazards on construction sites. However, no accurate and reliable crane motion capturing technique is available to serve this purpose. The objective of this research is to explore a method for real-time crane motion capturing and investigate an approach for assisting hazard detection. To achieve this goal, this research employed various techniques including: 1) a sensor-based method that accurately, reliably, and comprehensively captures crane motions in real-time; 2) computationally efficient algorithms for fusing and processing sensing data (e.g., distance, angle, acceleration) from different types of sensors; 3) an approach that integrates crane motion data with known as-is environment data to detect hazards associated with lifting tasks; and 4) a strategy that effectively presents crane operator with crane motion information and warn them with potential hazards. A prototype system was developed and tested on a real crane in a field environment. The results show that the system is able to continuously and accurately monitor crane motion in real-time.