Towards worker-centric construction scene understanding: Status quo and future directions

Abstract

Construction scene understanding is the process of perceiving, analyzing, and interpreting three-dimensional dynamic scenes observed through sensor networks, which is usually real-time. The purpose is to understand the construction scene by analyzing the geometric and semantic features of the objects and their relationships. Construction scene understanding is a basic technology for construction automation and Human-Robot Interaction. Although there are several reviews on this topic, existing reviews do not cover the latest technological advances and lack systematic elaboration for construction scene understanding. Therefore, this paper reviews research on construction scene understanding conducted over the past fifteen years, summarizing five key scene elements: signals, pixels, objects, relationships, and events, along with the richness of semantic information. It also outlines advancements in perception and reasoning abilities in this domain. In addition, this review proposes five research trends and seven future directions to provide some inspiration for researchers.