New camera tech set to benefit construction site safety

A field operative wearing RealWear Assisted Reality headsets from SimplyVideo

Soletanche Bachy, a foundations and geotechnical engineering specialist are collaborating with SimplyVideo to improve health and safety management.

Field operatives are using RealWear Assisted Reality headsets from SimplyVideo – the worker collaboration platform for extended reality, which connects them to offices around the world.

This allows site visits and inspections to take place without travel and means operatives can join sites on the ground virtually.

“With global travel restrictions being imposed last year, the pandemic exacerbated the issues related to health & safety,” says Stuart Brooks, Health, Safety, Security and Environmental Manager (HSSE) for Soletanche Bachy International Major Projects.

“Ultimately, SimplyVideo was the only platform that offered what we considered to be a workable solution – we needed more than just a remote expert tool; we needed a cross-reality collaboration platform and that’s what SimplyVideo does so well.”

Soletanche Bachy are using head-mounted devices that incorporate a microphone, display and speakers for total hands-free working.

According to Brooks, one device has been a game-changer; the RealWear HMT-1 head-mounted Android tablet. The unit can survive drops onto concrete and provides easy voice-based operation in noisy environments.

The display in the boom appears to the eye as a 7-inch screen, offering multi-language speech recognition and 4G connectivity. The head-mounted tablets utilise Assisted Reality (AR) technology – a subset of Extended Reality (XR). The technology can also record content as well as being able to refer to the display for documentation or schematics.

SimplyVideo has also created a virtual mentoring tool allowing onsite training of less experienced workers. Those with greater expertise can join virtually and help.

“The beauty of the SimplyVideo solution is that we can bring more expertise together; something we simply couldn’t do before. The platform gives us a clear visual representation of what’s really happening on site.”

The technology also supports XR smartglasses – SimplyVideo is the world’s first video communications software that has been developed to bring in any Extended Reality smartglasses to a video call.

When paired with AR smartglasses users can be joined on a video call by a remote expert that can guide them and assist them throughout their activities.

As well as Assisted Reality, SimplyVideo also supports Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR).