Automated Control on Wearing Personal Protective Equipment

Abstract

The cost of world-wide accidents represent ≈4% of global Gross Domestic Product each year, which could be minimized or prevented by using adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Although wearing adequate PPE are mandatory in a number of occupations where workers are exposed to risks, experience show-us that supervision is necessary to ensuring it. The traditional supervision was proved not to be effective enough, making it necessary to turn on technological solutions. The objective of this work was to investigate if RFID technology is a feasible solution for monitoring the usage of PPE on construction sites, giving suggestions which tags to use and characteristics of RFID portals for field applications. The results of laboratory tests show that four antennas with correct disposition on the RFID portal are enough to ensure readability of the worker when passing through it. While six passive tags were tested, two of them were found to be ideal for this purpose: the Web Lite Wet Inlay with a rubber wrap due to its protective characteristics, and the SmartTrac Dog Bone due to its size. In conclusion, the RFID technology was found to be a feasible solution for automatically control the wearing of PPE on construction sites. There is a need for further research on construction sites.