Vision-based Warning System for Maintenance Personnel on Short-Term Roadwork Site

TL;DR

This paper introduces a vision-based warning system that actively alerts maintenance workers of approaching vehicles at short-term roadwork sites, enhancing safety beyond passive barriers.

Contribution

It presents a novel active warning system using visual and acoustic signals, with an algorithm to reduce false alarms, validated through laboratory and real-world tests.

Findings

80% reduction in false warnings due to traffic flow check algorithm

System effective in both laboratory and real-world environments

Provides proactive safety alerts to maintenance personnel

Abstract

We propose a vision-based warning system for the maintenance personnel working on short-term construction sites. Traditional solutions use passive protection, like setting up traffic cones, safety beacons, or even nothing. However, such methods cannot function as physical safety barriers to separate working areas from used lanes. In contrast, our system provides active protection, leveraging acoustic and visual warning signals to help road workers be cautious of approaching vehicles before they pass the working area. To decrease too many warnings to relieve a disturbance of road workers, we implemented our traffic flow check algorithm, by which about 80% of the useless notices can be filtered. We conduct the evaluations in laboratory conditions and the real world, proving our system's applicability and reliability.