Ci-Jyun Liang

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) · Center for Occupational Robotics Research

This research focuses on a long-standing, yet critical problem in the erection of steel structures. In the current state of practice, steel workers must stand on an unfinished structure to assist with the assembly of structural elements manually. They must pull on the wire hanging under the rigging elements to align the bolting holes of the moving...

Global collaboration is the major trend in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry; training in global engineering collaboration thus is highly demanded in existing engineering education. One approach to this training is to expose students to sufficient experiences, such as having them participating in a global project-based course...

The prospect of human-robot collaborative work on construction sites introduces new workplace hazards that must be mitigated to ensure safety. Human workers working on tasks alongside construction robots must perceive the interaction to be safe in order to ensure team identification and trust. Detecting the robot pose in real-time is thus an essent...

Robots have been deployed in workplaces to assist, work alongside, or collaborate with human workers on various tasks, which introduces new occupational safety and health hazards and requires research efforts to address these issues. This study investigated the research trends for robotic applications in occupational safety and health. The scientom...

This research focuses on developing a robot digital twin (DT) and the communication methods to connect it with the corresponding physical robot in collaborative human–robot construction work. Robots are being increasingly deployed on construction sites to assist human workers with physically demanding work tasks. Robot simulations in a process-leve...

Human cognition plays a critical role in construction work, particularly in the context of high-level task planning and in-field improvisation. On the other hand, robots are adept at performing numerical computation and repetitive physical tasks with precise motion control. The unstructured and complex nature of construction environments and the in...

Construction robots continue to be increasingly deployed on construction sites to assist human workers in various tasks to improve safety, efficiency, and productivity. Due to the recent and ongoing growth in robot capabilities and functionalities, humans and robots are now able to work side-by-side and to share workspaces. The emerging field of hu...

The development of extended reality in recent years is opening doors for using extended reality devices (virtual reality, augmented, and mixed reality devices) in education and healthcare. The purpose of this pilot study was to test the use of augmented reality in teaching healthcare practitioners in a stroke assessment simulation designed for clin...

Construction robots continue to be increasingly deployed on construction sites to assist human workers in various tasks to improve safety, efficiency, and productivity. Due to the recent and ongoing growth in robot capabilities and functionalities, humans and robots are now able to work side-by-side and share workspaces. However, due to inherent sa...

Robots can assist workers in performing physically-demanding construction tasks, which are typically quasi-repetitive, wherein the geometry of the workspace is dissimilar despite similar tasks. As a result, robots must determine motion trajectories based on the encountered workspace geometry. Learning from Demonstration (LfD) methods have the poten...

Struck-by accidents are potential safety concerns on construction sites and require a robust machine pose estimation. The development of deep learning methods has enhanced the human pose estimation that can be adapted for articulated machines. These methods require abundant dataset for training, which is challenging and time-consuming to obtain on-...

The development of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality in recent years is opening doors for using VR, AR and MR devices in education. The purpose of this study was to test the use of augmented reality in teaching healthcare practitioners. To conduct our research, a simulation application was developed for the HoloLens that projects a face display...

A construction site is a dynamically changing environment, whose layout continually changes in each process phase. Failing to consider the changes in site layout can cause serious safety issues, and result in extra cost and time for the project. Site layout planning (off-site) and site monitoring (on-site) are two major research topics that help ad...

The current crane erection path computation methods are not easily scalable for assisting engineers to find and evaluate detailed erection plans. A reliable and efficient method to help plan erection paths is required, especially for certain critical erection tasks involving heavy lifting objects and narrow working spaces. In this research, we prop...

Workers are required to stand on dangerous unfinished steel structures to assemble elements manually. Therefore, we developed a robotic assembly system (RAS) to prevent accidental falls. The RAS consists of four methods: rotation, alignment, bolting, and unloading. The rotation method utilizes a flywheel equipped on top of a rigging beam to rotate...

During the assembly process of steel beams, the laborers must stand on narrow steel beams to assemble structures. Locating and bolting are two main steps in the steel beam assembly process. In the locating step, laborers haul and position the steel beam into the target position. In the bolting step, laborers assemble the steel beam with bolts. This...

As the rear of a wheelchair is often in a wheelchair user's blind spot, an innovative and low-cost device, BotBeep, was developed to warn the user of elevation changes behind the wheelchair corresponding to holes, steep slopes, and staircases. Thus, BotBeep reduces the risk of falling and turning over. Tests were conducted using a smartphone as a c...