Digital twin-enabled health monitoring of construction workers during robotic teleoperation

Construction robots are increasingly being used on job sites to assist workers with repetitive and labor-intensive construction tasks. There is a lack of effective methods to evaluate workers' health and safety during human-robot interactions to take necessary preventive actions owing to the potential hazards to humans posed by construction robots. In this regard, digital twin (DT) technology holds promise for effectively characterizing the human-robot partnership and pertinent worker health information in real-time. In the context of human-robot interaction, DT technology can be effectively employed to simulate the interactions between workers and robots. This chapter proposes a framework for the construction of a DT-based platform that will support the health and safety monitoring of workers during human-robot teaming operations. It examines a virtual reality-based DT model for worker health monitoring using a combination of physiological signals, machine learning techniques, and immersive technologies.