Group-based VR Training to Improve Hazard Recognition, Evaluation, and Control for Highway Construction Workers

The construction industry spends approximately 15billion/year for occupational injuries, and highway sector is the most dangerous. Highway construction workers have to work in close proximity to construction equipment and high-speed traffic, exposing them to an elevated risk of serious injuries/fatalities. Safety training has a direct impact on the prevention of construction accidents. The traditional lecture-based construction training curriculum has not been revisited and is designed to train the workers individually, thus the benefits of collective engagement in worker training is ignored. High-engagement Virtual Reality (VR) environments offer a more effective learning experience for training workers to identify hazards in the job site. We present a training platform for instructor-in-the-loop, group-based VR training to complement and increase the effectiveness of the current training program for highway workers. We develop a VR platform in which an instructor can create and improvise on work zone scenarios and share the virtual scenario easily with the entire class.