Performance evaluation of ultra wideband technology for construction resource location tracking in harsh environments

Emerging wireless remote sensing technologies offer significant potential to advance the management of construction processes by providing real-time access to the locations of workers, materials, and equipment. Unfortunately, little is known regarding the accuracy, reliability, and practical benefits of an emerging technology, effectively impeding widespread adoption. This paper evaluates a commercially-available Ultra Wideband (UWB) system for real-time, mobile resource location tracking in harsh construction environments. A focus of this paper is to measure the performance of the UWB technology for tracking mobile resources in real-world construction settings. To assess tracking accuracy, location error rates for select UWB track signals are obtained by automatically tracking a single entity using a Robotic Total Station (RTS) for ground truth. Furthermore, to demonstrate the benefits of UWB technology, the paper provides case studies of resource tracking for analysis of worksite operations. The work demonstrates the applicability of UWB for the design of construction management support tools.

Research highlights
► A commercially-available UWB system provided real-time location data in harsh environments.
► Construction resources (personnel, equipment, material) were tracked in realistic field trials.
► The accuracy of UWB system is sufficient enough in large open construction environments.
► Reliable spatio-temporal information from job sites can be automatically extracted.
► Important construction safety and work sampling problems can be resolved.