Omobolanle Ogunseiju
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Education Research
Construction sites are hard places to practice new skills. The industry has one of the highest fatality rates, consumes enormous quantities of natural resources through roughly $2.1 trillion of building each year, and is adopting technologies such as sensors and wearable robots faster than classrooms can teach them.
- Fields
Education Research
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
construction engineering and management
construction education
virtual reality
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2028
What they work on
- Identify the competencies needed to advance sustainable construction with sensing technologies, using a Delphi expert-consensus study and focus groups with industry practitioners, and convert them into formal learning content.
- Develop VRAPS, a virtual reality environment combining sensing technologies, a virtual learning assistant, tangible objects and adaptive artificial intelligence, and analyze learners' behavioral data to find which characteristics enable personalized learning.
- Assess whether VRAPS enhances the problem-solving skills needed for sustainable construction, through implementation and mixed-methods evaluation at Georgia Tech and CSU Fresno.
- Determine the skills, knowledge and abilities practitioners need to deploy wearable robots on construction sites, through interviews that will shape the ViRLE learning environment.
- Build ViRLE by integrating wearable robots, virtual reality, tangible interactions and sensing technologies, and test which features help students use wearable robots to reduce ergonomic exposures in construction tasks at two institutions.
More about the research
Because real job sites are hazardous and constantly changing, students rarely get safe hands-on practice. Both of these collaborative projects ask whether interactive virtual reality can fill that gap for construction engineering and management students. Each begins by asking industry practitioners what skills are needed, then builds a virtual learning environment, studies which of its features actually help students learn, and tests it at two institutions with different student populations.
Why it matters
Construction work is dangerous and resource-intensive, and firms are turning to sensors and wearable robots to improve safety and sustainability. Training environments that let students rehearse these technologies virtually could produce graduates ready to apply them on real sites, potentially reducing worker injuries and the environmental footprint of building, while also serving professional development and outreach audiences.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Learning in Sustainable Construction Education
NSF · Oct 2025 – Sep 2028
Collaborative Research: An Embodied Learning Environment for Advancing Human-Wearable Robot Interactions Skills in Construction Education
NSF · Oct 2024 – Sep 2027
Closest labs
Jingang Yi
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Engineering
Develop machine learning methods for real-time recognition of construction workers' activities and estimation of their body posture, using wearable sensors.
Jee Woong Park
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, NV·Engineering
Develop computer vision AI algorithms that detect workplace hazards in photographs that trainees take on their own construction sites.
David Reeping
University of Cincinnati, OH·Education Research
Reach expert consensus on the fundamental concepts needed to master cyber-physical systems through a Delphi study, structured rounds of surveys of academic and industry experts.
The school
Georgia Institute of Technology: 50 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 572 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.