Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 061071 Bucharest, Romania
Salwa Saafi
Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Technicka 12, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Alexandru Rusu-Casandra
Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 061071 Bucharest, Romania
Radim Burget
Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Technicka 12, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Ion Marghescu
Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, University Politehnica of Bucharest, 061071 Bucharest, Romania
Jiri Hosek
Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication, Brno University of Technology, Technicka 12, 616 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Aleksandr Ometov
Unit of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, 33720 Tampere, Finland
Today, ensuring work safety is considered to be one of the top priorities for various industries. Workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths often entail substantial production and financial losses, governmental checks, series of dismissals, and loss of reputation. Wearable devices are one of the technologies that flourished with the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0, allowing employers to monitor and maintain safety at workplaces. The purpose of this article is to systematize knowledge in the field of industrial wearables’ safety to assess the relevance of their use in enterprises as the technology maintaining occupational safety, to correlate the benefits and costs of their implementation, and, by identifying research gaps, to outline promising directions for future work in this area. We categorize industrial wearable functions into four classes (monitoring, supporting, training, and tracking) and provide a classification of the metrics collected by wearables to better understand the potential role of wearable technology in preserving workplace safety. Furthermore, we discuss key communication technologies and localization techniques utilized in wearable-based work safety solutions. Finally, we analyze the main challenges that need to be addressed to further enable and support the use of wearable devices for industrial work safety.
