BLE-based IoT Proximity Warning System for Guaranteeing the Operators’ Safety in Outdoor Working Environments

The IoT paradigm plays a crucial role as one of the technologies that contribute towards addressing one of the most significant challenges employers have to guarantee the safety of their workers at all times. Ensuring the safety of workers at all times is especially challenging in specific working environments such as modern farms, where humans and heavy vehicles or machinery must interact and operate in unison daily. Installing efficient and accurate localization systems on remote-controlled farm machines (RCFM) in such high-risk working environments can help guarantee worker safety and prevent fatal accidents. This paper presents the preliminary results obtained from an IoT-based framework that leverages Bluetooth Low Energy technology and combines the Log-distance path loss model and fingerprint technique to estimate the distance between machinery and operators. We demonstrate how the applied method can facilitate quick position estimation, which is essential for generating warning notifications to prevent operator accidents. The experimental results presented in this paper also demonstrate the reliability of the applied approach and prompt important discussion questions to promote future works on the topic.