How AI is helping steel workers to feel safer than ever

Workplace safety is often the number one concern for most companies, particularly those in the manufacturing industry.

Each year, it’s estimated that over 100,000 serious injuries occur at the workplace in Australasia, resulting in hundreds of deaths and costing the industry an estimated $6.2 billion.

With this mind, Vulcan wanted to help its 700 staff across Australia and New Zealand to feel safer and improve its own safety training, particularly when employees loaded and unloaded steel from its flatbed trucks.

The initial prototype, first explored at Datacomp – Datacom’s annual hackathon event  – used artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor if staff were wearing hard hats in recorded video footage. Building on this, Vulcan was then able to develop the AI to recognise if staff were also wearing high-vis jackets as well, using truck-mounted camera footage.

An accompanying app also allows supervisors to review any flagged infringements which, if the AI is wrong, helps to further enhance its training, and if right, helps to keep employees safe.

This innovative solution now helps Vulcan to detect unsafe behaviour and improve its training to help keep staff safer than ever.