What if you could learn from your mistakes before they happen?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In high-risk industries like construction and electrical work, a single error can be life-altering or deadly. Workers take safety trainings, but long days and weeks of hard work around dangerous equipment can numb professionals to hazards \u2014 a well-known jobsite phenomenon that researchers call \u201crisk habituation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To help prevent jobsite accidents and save lives by interrupting potentially dangerous, habituated jobsite behavior, Ryan Ahn, Texas A&M associate professor of construction science, is developing a research-based, virtual reality training environment that doesn\u2019t expose workers to real-life risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Funded by a $750,000 National Science Foundation grant, Ahn and Brian Anderson, Texas A&M associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, are creating virtual reality environments that simulate accidents, and provide unpleasant, but not dangerous, sensory feedback to trainees. They will then study how the training impacts trainees\u2019 risk perception and their attitudes about jobsite safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn has seen firsthand how accidents can affect workers and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy uncle was an employee at my dad\u2019s construction company and was badly injured doing electrical work,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cHe was in the hospital for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn\u2019s father built the family home and headed an electrical contracting company during Ahn\u2019s youth, which inspired him to choose architecture as his college major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, he quickly learned that art and design wasn\u2019t his favorite work. Because he also had an interest in technology, he switched majors to construction science, and discovered his passion for using emerging tech to improve construction safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Electricians, like Ahn\u2019s uncle, have dangerous jobs. Because they work at heights and with high voltage, they encounter high risk every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn said that while these workers are highly trained and skilled, they often fall prey to \u201crisk habituation,\u201d which causes many occupational workers to unintentionally expose themselves to hazards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are a lot of high-risk hazards on a jobsite, and on the first day, these workers are informed of them in detail,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cBut they work for a long time and find the hazards aren\u2019t having a direct impact on them, so they start to ignore them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn said once workers do something against safety standards and nothing happens, it can feel like there isn\u2019t as much risk anymore and they\u2019re far more likely to repeat the behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou do it the wrong way so many times and nothing happens, so you think it\u2019s safe,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cThat is when injury happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another contributing factor for workplace safety accidents is \u201csensory level habituation,\u201d which happens when professionals who work close to safety equipment end up tuning out audible warning signals simply because they acclimate to the sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re investigating how much these workers are habituated to those sounds,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cBy doing a psycho-physical assessment on workers with three or more years of experience in the field, we can see if the brain is responding to those sounds or if they\u2019re just hearing them as background noise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Similar to how a child is more careful to not touch a stove after burning their hand, Ahn says a worker who has experienced an accident becomes more alert of the dangerous behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn hopes to create a similarly powerful and long-lasting memory without endangering a person\u2019s body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To do this, Ahn and his team created a virtual, simulated working environment. The first scenario is a pedestrian roadway worker doing a job around heavy machinery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A subject who enters the training is given an assignment in the virtual jobsite and is monitored as they work via eye movement tracking technology. Most subjects start habituating, or stop paying attention to safety signals, after just 15\u201320 minutes into the simulation, he said. When the worker stops paying attention to safety signals or being aware of what\u2019s around them, trainers expose them to consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe run them over with a streamroller,\u201d Ahn said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Subjects experience the visual sensation of the accident in virtual reality and punitive feedback via sound, vibration and electrical impulses from a backpack that stimulates their nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The shock is harmless, but the combined experience creates a more vivid simulation and, hopefully, a more sustained memory impact, said Ahn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team did a version of the experiment where some subjects experienced an accident and others, who were more alert to signals, did not. A month later, they brought back both groups and found that those who didn\u2019t experience the accident habituated much more quickly than their steamrolled counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey got complacent,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cLater we will get feedback from their safety manager to see if their behavior has improved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahn hopes his VR training system can eventually replace the existing safety programs workers go through, which are classroom-based lecture programs where certified instructors talk about common hazards of jobsites and how to avoid them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe workers are required to take those trainings repeatedly,\u201d Ahn said. \u201cThe problem is that while it delivers the knowledge and refreshes it, it is not changing the behavior of the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By presenting their behaviors in VR and doing an intervention, Ahn said he believes that they can actually change behaviors and improve jobsite safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n