| Author: | Ma, Jie |
| Title: | Physical and mental fatigue assessment of construction workers using sweat-based biosensors |
| Advisors: | Li, Heng (BRE) Tao, Xiaoming (SFT) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2023 |
| Subject: | Construction workers -- Health and hygiene Fatigue Biosensors Wearable technology Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Department of Building and Real Estate |
| Pages: | xix, 157 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Fatigue has been identified as a primary cause of construction site accidents in many studies. Owing to the nature of construction tasks, workers have to perform their duties attentively over a long period of time in a harsh environment. Mental and physical fatigue are the dominant risk factors for weakening workers’ ability to perform functionally. Recent studies have proposed electroencephalography and eye-tracking based solutions to detect mental fatigue, whereas physiological biomarkers (i.e., heart rate, temperature, and breathing rate) to assess physical fatigue. However, fatigue that construction workers usually experience appears to be complicated and more than one type. Specifically, it usually involves the interactive influences between physical and mental fatigue, therefore, single type of fatigue assessment could result in biased and inaccurate outputs. This study proposed to develop non-invasive wearable sweat-based biosensors that can measure chemical biomarkers to assess mental and physical fatigue. To achieve this objective, first, a systematic review was conducted to investigate 1) the potential sweat-based biomarkers that are relevant to fatigue; 2) the prevalent sensing technologies in the sweat biosensor domain. Second, an experiment was conducted to model the relationship between sweat biomarkers and fatigue levels during simulated construction rebar tasks using machine learning techniques. Lactate was selected for further investigation due to its high concentration in sweat and its crucial role in supplying energy resources during high-energy consumption activities. Third, an advanced wireless organic electrochemical transistor-based biosensor with high selectivity and sensitivity was developed to measure lactate concentrations from sweat. Fourth, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the reliability of the sweat lactate device in assessing fatigue. This was done by comparing the results obtained from the proposed device with those obtained from a professional blood lactate meter, and conducting a test-retest experiment to assess its accuracy. Last, an investigation was conducted to validate the usefulness of sweat lactate in assessing physical and mental fatigue during construction manual material handling task and equipment operation task, respectively. Overall this project was the first to develop and validate the feasibility of sweat-based sensors in detecting fatigue levels during construction tasks. The results of this study will provide a comprehensive solution for monitoring and mitigating fatigue of construction workers exposed to prolonged tasks in seemingly harsh environments. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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