Real-Time Personal Protective Equipment Compliance Detection Based on Deep Learning Algorithm

The construction industry is one of the most dangerous industries in the world due to workers being vulnerable to accidents, injuries and even death. Therefore, how to effectively manage the appropriate usage of personal protective equipment (PPE) is an important research issue. In this study, deep learning is applied to the PPE inspection model to verify whether construction workers are equipped in accordance with the regulations, and this is expected to reduce the probability of related occupational disasters caused by the inappropriate use of PPE. The method is based on the YOLOv3, YOLOv4 and YOLOv7 algorithms to detect worker’s helmets and high-visibility vests from images or videos in real time. The model was trained on a new PPE dataset collected and organized by this study; the dataset contains 11,000 images and 88,725 labels. According to the test results, can achieve a 97% mean average precision (mAP) and 25 frames per second (FPS). The research result shows that the detection and counting data in this method have performed well and can be applied to the real-time PPE detection of workers at the construction job site.