Past Winners - 2019

The Maker Games

Brief

Industry partner Boral Australia, the cement manufacturing company, needed a way to improve its safety isolation procedures to reduce the risk of workers being electrocuted when shutting down complex machines. This is a problem widely faced by the construction industry with the risk of electrocution being the second leading cause of death. 

Some of the machines used by construction workers have up to 100 points to turn off, and while workers are given manuals to read, workers may skim over the details or forget an isolation point that puts them at risk.

The solution

Using smart safety glasses already available on the market, the team created software application “safAR”.The application works in conjunction with the glasses to identify smart IoT lockout devices on a machine’s multiple isolation points. In real-time, the glasses sense if a switch has been turned off, and if not, guides the user through both visual and audio prompts. The software uses machine learning and image recognition, which means the glasses can recognise what machine and isolation points the worker is switching off and automatically provide the right prompts. 

Team safAR successfully created a proof of concept for their novel solution by demonstrating how it would work for switching off a toaster through a machine learning algorithm that recognises electronic devices such as a television and laptop.

Advantages:

  • Easy to use: the user instantly receives audio, and video prompts to shut down equipment
  • The solution is hands-free: safety glasses with speech recognition software
  • Fits seamlessly into the current workflow: no entry barriers

 

“Being part of the maker games was a great experience! I loved the opportunity to design from the customer’s perspective. Our prototype solved the problem rather than the symptom. Plus we got to use emerging technologies including augmented reality, object recognition, Internet of Things and speech recognition.”

- Saloni Goda
  2019 Maker Games Winner
  2018 Peter Farrell Cup Winner