arXiv subjects

Reza Akhavian

Publications and source records attributed to Reza Akhavian.

18 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Control Barrier Functions with Audio Risk Awareness for Robot Safe Navigation on Construction Sites

Construction automation increasingly requires autonomous mobile robots, yet robust autonomy remains challenging on construction sites. These environments are dynamic and often visually occluded, which complicates perception and navigation. In this context, valuable information from audio sources remains underutilized in most autonomy stacks. This work presents a control barrier function (CBF)-based safety filter that provides safety guarantees for obstacle avoidance while adapting safety margins during navigation using an audio-derived risk cue. The proposed framework augments the CBF with a lightweight, real-time jackhammer detector based on signal envelope and periodicity. Its output serves as an exogenous risk that is directly enforced in the controller by modulating the barrier function. The approach is evaluated in simulation with two CBF formulations (circular and goal-aligned elliptical) with a unicycle robot navigating a cluttered construction environment. Results show that the CBF safety filter eliminates safety violations across all trials while reaching the target in 40.2% (circular) vs. 76.5% (elliptical), as the elliptical formulation better avoids deadlock. This integration of audio perception into a CBF-based controller demonstrates a pathway toward richer multimodal safety reasoning in autonomous robots for safety-critical and dynamic environments.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

BIM-Discrepancy-Driven Active Sensing for Risk-Aware UAV-UGV Navigation

This paper presents a BIM-discrepancy-driven active sensing framework for cooperative navigation between unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in dynamic construction environments. Traditional navigation approaches rely on static Building Information Modeling (BIM) priors or limited onboard perception. In contrast, our framework continuously fuses real-time LiDAR data from aerial and ground robots with BIM priors to maintain an evolving 2D occupancy map. We quantify navigation safety through a unified corridor-risk metric integrating occupancy uncertainty, BIM-map discrepancy, and clearance. When risk exceeds safety thresholds, the UAV autonomously re-scans affected regions to reduce uncertainty and enable safe replanning. Validation in PX4-Gazebo simulation with Robotec GPU LiDAR demonstrates that risk-triggered re-scanning reduces mean corridor risk by 58% and map entropy by 43% compared to static BIM navigation, while maintaining clearance margins above 0.4 m. Compared to frontier-based exploration, our approach achieves similar uncertainty reduction in half the mission time. These results demonstrate that integrating BIM priors with risk-adaptive aerial sensing enables scalable, uncertainty-aware autonomy for construction robotics.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Bootstrapped LLM Semantics for Context-Aware Path Planning

Prompting robots with natural language (NL) has largely been studied as what task to execute (goal selection, skill sequencing) rather than how to execute that task safely and efficiently in semantically rich, human-centric spaces. We address this gap with a framework that turns a large language model (LLM) into a stochastic semantic sensor whose outputs modulate a classical planner. Given a prompt and a semantic map, we draw multiple LLM "danger" judgments and apply a Bayesian bootstrap to approximate a posterior over per-class risk. Using statistics from the posterior, we create a potential cost to formulate a path planning problem. Across simulated environments and a BIM-backed digital twin, our method adapts how the robot moves in response to explicit prompts and implicit contextual information. We present qualitative and quantitative results.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Building Information Models to Robot-Ready Site Digital Twins (BIM2RDT): An Agentic AI Safety-First Framework

The adoption of cyber-physical systems and jobsite intelligence that connects design models, real-time site sensing, and autonomous field operations can dramatically enhance digital management in the construction industry. This paper introduces BIM2RDT (Building Information Models to Robot-Ready Site Digital Twins), an agentic artificial intelligence (AI) framework designed to transform static Building Information Modeling (BIM) into dynamic, robot-ready digital twins (DTs) that prioritize safety during execution. The framework bridges the gap between pre-existing BIM data and real-time site conditions by integrating three key data streams: geometric and semantic information from BIM models, activity data from IoT sensor networks, and visual-spatial data collected by robots during site traversal. The methodology introduces Semantic-Gravity ICP (SG-ICP), a point cloud registration algorithm that leverages large language model (LLM) reasoning. Unlike traditional methods, SG-ICP utilizes an LLM to infer object-specific, plausible orientation priors based on BIM semantics, improving alignment accuracy by avoiding convergence on local minima. This creates a feedback loop where robot-collected data updates the DT, which in turn optimizes paths for missions. The framework employs YOLOE object detection and Shi-Tomasi corner detection to identify and track construction elements while using BIM geometry as a priori maps. The framework also integrates real-time Hand-Arm Vibration (HAV) monitoring, mapping sensor-detected safety events to the digital twin using IFC standards for intervention. Experiments demonstrate SG-ICP's superiority over standard ICP, achieving RMSE reductions of 64.3%--88.3% in alignment across scenarios with occluded features, ensuring plausible orientations. HAV integration triggers warnings upon exceeding exposure limits, enhancing compliance with ISO 5349-1.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Digital Twin-Guided Robot Path Planning: A Beta-Bernoulli Fusion with Large Language Model as a Sensor

Integrating natural language (NL) prompts into robotic mission planning has attracted significant interest in recent years. In the construction domain, Building Information Models (BIM) encapsulate rich NL descriptions of the environment. We present a novel framework that fuses NL directives with BIM-derived semantic maps via a Beta-Bernoulli Bayesian fusion by interpreting the LLM as a sensor: each obstacle's design-time repulsive coefficient is treated as a Beta(alpha, beta) random variable and LLM-returned danger scores are incorporated as pseudo-counts to update alpha and beta. The resulting posterior mean yields a continuous, context-aware repulsive gain that augments a Euclidean-distance-based potential field for cost heuristics. By adjusting gains based on sentiment and context inferred from user prompts, our method guides robots along safer, more context-aware paths. This provides a numerically stable method that can chain multiple natural commands and prompts from construction workers and foreman to enable planning while giving flexibility to be integrated in any learned or classical AI framework. Simulation results demonstrate that this Beta-Bernoulli fusion yields both qualitative and quantitative improvements in path robustness and validity.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Advancing Accessible Hand-Arm Vibration Safety Monitoring: ISO-Compliance with Wearable Sensors and Transfer Functions

Field workers are frequently exposed to hazardous vibrations, increasing the risk of Hand-Arm Vibration Syndrome (HAVS) and other long-term health problems. ISO 5349-1 provides guidelines for measuring vibration exposure. However, this standard was established in controlled conditions using high-quality accelerometers directly attached to power tool handles. This study investigates an alternative, wearable sensor-based data collection process and develops an error-minimization transfer function that derives values comparable to ISO benchmarks for safety monitoring. Experiments are performed with subjects hammer drilling into concrete while vibrations are measured using three accelerometers at different sampling frequencies. The transfer function maps vibration data across sensor positions by accounting for damping effects. The findings indicate a significant reduction in acceleration between the palm and upper arm, highlight the impact of sampling frequency on data accuracy, and enable accurate comparison of true hand-arm vibration levels with existing standard limits to allow accessible, real-time, and cost-effective HAVS prevention.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2025

Bayesian BIM-Guided Construction Robot Navigation with NLP Safety Prompts in Dynamic Environments

Construction robotics increasingly relies on natural language processing for task execution, creating a need for robust methods to interpret commands in complex, dynamic environments. While existing research primarily focuses on what tasks robots should perform, less attention has been paid to how these tasks should be executed safely and efficiently. This paper presents a novel probabilistic framework that uses sentiment analysis from natural language commands to dynamically adjust robot navigation policies in construction environments. The framework leverages Building Information Modeling (BIM) data and natural language prompts to create adaptive navigation strategies that account for varying levels of environmental risk and uncertainty. We introduce an object-aware path planning approach that combines exponential potential fields with a grid-based representation of the environment, where the potential fields are dynamically adjusted based on the semantic analysis of user prompts. The framework employs Bayesian inference to consolidate multiple information sources: the static data from BIM, the semantic content of natural language commands, and the implied safety constraints from user prompts. We demonstrate our approach through experiments comparing three scenarios: baseline shortest-path planning, safety-oriented navigation, and risk-aware routing. Results show that our method successfully adapts path planning based on natural language sentiment, achieving a 50\% improvement in minimum distance to obstacles when safety is prioritized, while maintaining reasonable path lengths. Scenarios with contrasting prompts, such as "dangerous" and "safe", demonstrate the framework's ability to modify paths. This approach provides a flexible foundation for integrating human knowledge and safety considerations into construction robot navigation.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2025

Safe and Trustworthy Robot Pathfinding with BIM, MHA*, and NLP

Construction robots have gained significant traction in recent years in research and development. However, the application of industrial robots has unique challenges. Dynamic environments, domain-specific tasks, and complex localization and mapping are significant obstacles in their development. In construction job sites, moving objects and complex machinery can make pathfinding a difficult task due to the possibility of object collisions. Existing methods such as simultaneous localization and mapping are viable solutions to this problem, however, due to the precision and data quality required by the sensors and the processing of the information, they can be very computationally expensive. We propose using spatial and semantic information in building information modeling (BIM) to develop domain-specific pathfinding strategies. In this work, we integrate a multi-heuristic A* (MHA*) algorithm using APFs from the BIM spatial information and process textual information from the BIM using large language models (LLMs) to adjust the algorithm for dynamic object avoidance. We show increased robot object proximity by 80% while maintaining similar path lengths.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

Adaptive Robot Perception in Construction Environments using 4D BIM

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is a pivotal component of robot perception for physical Human Robot Interaction (pHRI) tasks. In construction robotics, it is vital that robots have an accurate and robust perception of worker activities. This enhanced perception is the foundation of trustworthy and safe Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) in an industrial setting. Many developed HAR algorithms lack the robustness and adaptability to ensure seamless HRC. Recent works have employed multi-modal approaches to increase feature considerations. This paper further expands previous research to include 4D building information modeling (BIM) schedule data. We created a pipeline that transforms high-level BIM schedule activities into a set of low-level tasks in real-time. The framework then utilizes this subset as a tool to restrict the solution space that the HAR algorithm can predict activities from. By limiting this subspace through 4D BIM schedule data, the algorithm has a higher chance of predicting the true possible activities from a smaller pool of possibilities in a localized setting as compared to calculating all global possibilities at every point. Results indicate that the proposed approach achieves higher confidence predictions over the base model without leveraging the BIM data.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2024

Ergonomic Optimization in Worker-Robot Bimanual Object Handover: Implementing REBA Using Reinforcement Learning in Virtual Reality

Robots can serve as safety catalysts on construction job sites by taking over hazardous and repetitive tasks while alleviating the risks associated with existing manual workflows. Research on the safety of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) is traditionally focused on addressing the risks associated with potential collisions. However, it is equally important to ensure that the workflows involving a collaborative robot are inherently safe, even though they may not result in an accident. For example, pHRI may require the human counterpart to use non-ergonomic body postures to conform to the robot hardware and physical configurations. Frequent and long-term exposure to such situations may result in chronic health issues. Safety and ergonomics assessment measures can be understood by robots if they are presented in algorithmic fashions so optimization for body postures is attainable. While frameworks such as Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) have been an industry standard for many decades, they lack a rigorous mathematical structure which poses challenges in using them immediately for pHRI safety optimization purposes. Furthermore, learnable approaches have limited robustness outside of their training data, reducing generalizability. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that approaches optimization through Reinforcement Learning, ensuring precise, online ergonomic scores as compared to approximations, while being able to generalize and tune the regiment to any human and any task. To ensure practicality, the training is done in virtual reality utilizing Inverse Kinematics to simulate human movement mechanics. Experimental findings are compared to ergonomically naive object handover heuristics and indicate promising results where the developed framework can find the optimal object handover coordinates in pHRI contexts for manual material handling exemplary situations.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

Expanding Frozen Vision-Language Models without Retraining: Towards Improved Robot Perception

Vision-language models (VLMs) have shown powerful capabilities in visual question answering and reasoning tasks by combining visual representations with the abstract skill set large language models (LLMs) learn during pretraining. Vision, while the most popular modality to augment LLMs with, is only one representation of a scene. In human-robot interaction scenarios, robot perception requires accurate scene understanding by the robot. In this paper, we define and demonstrate a method of aligning the embedding spaces of different modalities (in this case, inertial measurement unit (IMU) data) to the vision embedding space through a combination of supervised and contrastive training, enabling the VLM to understand and reason about these additional modalities without retraining. We opt to give the model IMU embeddings directly over using a separate human activity recognition model that feeds directly into the prompt to allow for any nonlinear interactions between the query, image, and IMU signal that would be lost by mapping the IMU data to a discrete activity label. Further, we demonstrate our methodology's efficacy through experiments involving human activity recognition using IMU data and visual inputs. Our results show that using multiple modalities as input improves the VLM's scene understanding and enhances its overall performance in various tasks, thus paving the way for more versatile and capable language models in multi-modal contexts.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Assessing Trust in Construction AI-Powered Collaborative Robots using Structural Equation Modeling

This study aimed to investigate the key technical and psychological factors that impact the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals' trust in collaborative robots (cobots) powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The study employed a nationwide survey of 600 AEC industry practitioners to gather in-depth responses and valuable insights into the future opportunities for promoting the adoption, cultivation, and training of a skilled workforce to leverage this technology effectively. A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that safety and reliability are significant factors for the adoption of AI-powered cobots in construction. Fear of being replaced resulting from the use of cobots can have a substantial effect on the mental health of the affected workers. A lower error rate in jobs involving cobots, safety measurements, and security of data collected by cobots from jobsites significantly impact reliability, while the transparency of cobots' inner workings can benefit accuracy, robustness, security, privacy, and communication, and results in higher levels of automation, all of which demonstrated as contributors to trust. The study's findings provide critical insights into the perceptions and experiences of AEC professionals towards adoption of cobots in construction and help project teams determine the adoption approach that aligns with the company's goals workers' welfare.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Robust Activity Recognition for Adaptive Worker-Robot Interaction using Transfer Learning

Human activity recognition (HAR) using machine learning has shown tremendous promise in detecting construction workers' activities. HAR has many applications in human-robot interaction research to enable robots' understanding of human counterparts' activities. However, many existing HAR approaches lack robustness, generalizability, and adaptability. This paper proposes a transfer learning methodology for activity recognition of construction workers that requires orders of magnitude less data and compute time for comparable or better classification accuracy. The developed algorithm transfers features from a model pre-trained by the original authors and fine-tunes them for the downstream task of activity recognition in construction. The model was pre-trained on Kinetics-400, a large-scale video-based human activity recognition dataset with 400 distinct classes. The model was fine-tuned and tested using videos captured from manual material handling (MMH) activities found on YouTube. Results indicate that the fine-tuned model can recognize distinct MMH tasks in a robust and adaptive manner which is crucial for the widespread deployment of collaborative robots in construction.

cs.RO↗

arXiv2023

Trust in Construction AI-Powered Collaborative Robots: A Qualitative Empirical Analysis

Construction technology researchers and forward-thinking companies are experimenting with collaborative robots (aka cobots), powered by artificial intelligence (AI), to explore various automation scenarios as part of the digital transformation of the industry. Intelligent cobots are expected to be the dominant type of robots in the future of work in construction. However, the black-box nature of AI-powered cobots and unknown technical and psychological aspects of introducing them to job sites are precursors to trust challenges. By analyzing the results of semi-structured interviews with construction practitioners using grounded theory, this paper investigates the characteristics of trustworthy AI-powered cobots in construction. The study found that while the key trust factors identified in a systematic literature review -- conducted previously by the authors -- resonated with the field experts and end users, other factors such as financial considerations and the uncertainty associated with change were also significant barriers against trusting AI-powered cobots in construction.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

Trust in AI and Implications for the AEC Research: A Literature Analysis

Engendering trust in technically acceptable and psychologically embraceable systems requires domain-specific research to capture unique characteristics of the field of application. The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) research community has been recently harnessing advanced solutions offered by artificial intelligence (AI) to improve project workflows. Despite the unique characteristics of work, workers, and workplaces in the AEC industry, the concept of trust in AI has received very little attention in the literature. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the academic literature in two main areas of trust in AI and AI in the AEC, to explore the interplay between AEC projects unique aspects and the sociotechnical concepts that lead to trust in AI. A total of 490 peer-reviewed scholarly articles are analyzed in this study. The main constituents of human trust in AI are identified from the literature and are characterized within the AEC project types, processes, and technologies.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Trustworthy AI and Robotics and the Implications for the AEC Industry: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Potentials

Human-technology interaction deals with trust as an inevitable requirement for user acceptance. As the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics emerge and with their ever-growing socio-economic influence in various fields of research and practice, there is an imminent need to study trust in such systems. With the opaque work mechanism of AI-based systems and the prospect of intelligent robots as workers' companions, context-specific interdisciplinary studies on trust are key in increasing their adoption. Through a thorough systematic literature review on (1) trust in AI and robotics (AIR) and (2) AIR applications in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, this study identifies common trust dimensions in the literature and uses them to organize the paper. Furthermore, the connections of the identified dimensions to the existing and potential AEC applications are determined and discussed. Finally, major future directions on trustworthy AI and robotics in AEC research and practice are outlined.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Automated Workers Ergonomic Risk Assessment in Manual Material Handling using sEMG Wearable Sensors and Machine Learning

Manual material handling tasks have the potential to be highly unsafe from an ergonomic viewpoint. Safety inspections to monitor body postures can help mitigate ergonomic risks of material handling. However, the real effect of awkward muscle movements, strains, and excessive forces that may result in an injury may not be identified by external cues. This paper evaluates the ability of surface electromyogram (EMG)-based systems together with machine learning algorithms to automatically detect body movements that may harm muscles in material handling. The analysis utilized a lifting equation developed by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). This equation determines a Recommended Weight Limit, which suggests the maximum acceptable weight that a healthy worker can lift and carry as well as a Lifting Index value to assess the risk extent. Four different machine learning models, namely Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbor, and Random Forest are developed to classify the risk assessments calculated based on the NIOSH lifting equation. The sensitivity of the models to various parameters is also evaluated to find the best performance using each algorithm. Results indicate that Decision Tree models have the potential to predict the risk level with close to 99.35% accuracy.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2021

Automated Estimation of Construction Equipment Emission using Inertial Sensors and Machine Learning Models

The construction industry is one of the main producers of greenhouse gasses (GHG). Quantifying the amount of air pollutants including GHG emissions during a construction project has become an additional project objective to traditional metrics such as time, cost, and safety in many parts of the world. A major contributor to air pollution during construction is the use of heavy equipment and thus their efficient operation and management can substantially reduce the harm to the environment. Although the on-road vehicle emission prediction is a widely researched topic, construction equipment emission measurement and reduction have received very little attention. This paper describes the development and deployment of a novel framework that uses machine learning (ML) methods to predict the level of emissions from heavy construction equipment monitored via an Internet of Things (IoT) system comprised of accelerometer and gyroscope sensors. The developed framework was validated using an excavator performing real-world construction work. A portable emission measurement system (PEMS) was employed along with the inertial sensors to record data including the amount of CO, NOX, CO2, SO2, and CH4 pollutions emitted by the equipment. Different ML algorithms were developed and compared to identify the best model to predict emission levels from inertial sensors data. The results showed that Random Forest with the coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.94, 0.91 and 0.94 for CO, NOX, CO2, respectively was the best algorithm among different models evaluated in this study.

cs.LG↗