Journal of Information Technology in Construction
Journal of Information Technology in Construction
ITcon Vol. 30, pg. 924-962, http://www.itcon.org/2025/38
Foundations for Construction 5.0: A Review-based Taxonomy for Construction Worker Action Understanding
| DOI: | 10.36680/j.itcon.2025.038 | |
| submitted: | November 2024 | |
| revised: | March 2025 | |
| published: | June 2025 | |
| editor(s): | Yang Zou, Mostafa Babaeian Jelodar, Zhenan Feng, Brian H.W. Guo | |
| authors: | Sudheer Kumar Nanduri, Ph.D. Student
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay n.sudheer@iitb.ac.in Venkata Santosh Kumar Delhi, Associate Professor Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay venkatad@iitb.ac.in | |
| summary: | Construction worker actions, driven by personal and organizational goals, are vital in handling dynamic and unstructured environments. As the industry advances towards Construction 5.0, integrating automation while maintaining a value-oriented approach necessitates understanding the worker's actions in several dimensions. Action understanding goes beyond recognition to interpreting intentions, predicting future actions, assessing behavior, and many others. Yet, in the adoption, several challenges are faced due to complex action hierarchies, domain-specific applications, and a semantic gap between observations and interpretations. This paper addresses the challenges by developing a hierarchical taxonomy. An initial study is conducted on existing literature, narrowing the scope to the two-dimensional RGB camera-based computer vision as the sensing system. Identifying the lack of a structured approach and the existence of a semantic gap between observed features and their assigned meanings, this work embarks on establishing a unified taxonomy. Following the PRISMA protocol, a dual-literature review is conducted across literature across the domains of computer vision and construction automation, and findings are presented in three steps. In the first step, the review papers in the computer vision field were synthesized to develop a taxonomy essential for action understanding. This taxonomy outlines a four-step approach essential for action understanding. In the second step, the construction automation literature is reviewed, and the extant literature is mapped to the taxonomy established. In the third step, a discussion is presented on the current state-of-the-art approaches, the missing elements, the possible future directions specific to different parts of the taxonomy, and the integration with current technologies. Along with the future directions, suggestions also include use cases for the construction industry to improve upon core values in line with Construction 5.0. | |
| keywords: | Construction 5.0, Worker Action Understanding, Taxonomy | |
| full text: | (PDF file, 2.175 MB) | |
| citation: | Nanduri S K, Delhi V S K (2025). Foundations for Construction 5.0: A Review-based Taxonomy for Construction Worker Action Understanding, ITcon Vol. 30, Special issue Construction 5.0, pg. 924-962, https://doi.org/10.36680/j.itcon.2025.038 | |
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