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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Occupational Health and Safety
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1431757
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Prevention Strategies for Occupational Health Hazards View all 13 articles

Machine vision-based recognition of safety signs in work environments

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain
  • 2 University of León, León, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The field of image recognition is extensively researched, with applications addressing numerous challenges posed by the scientific community. Notably among these challenges are those related to individual safety. This article presents a system designed for the application of image recognition in the realm of Occupational Risk Prevention—a concern of paramount importance due to the imperative of preventing workplace accidents as falls, collisions, or other types of accidents for the benefit of both workers and enterprises. In this study, convolutional neural networks are employed due to their exceptional efficacy in image recognition. Leveraging this technology, the focus is on the recognition of safety signs used in Occupational Risk Prevention. The primary objective is to enable the recognition of these signs regardless of their orientation or potential degradation, phenomena commonly observed due to regular exposure to environmental elements or deliberate defacement. The results of this research substantiate the feasibility of integrating this technology into devices capable of promptly alerting individuals to potential risks. However, to improve classification capabilities, especially for highly degraded or complex images, a larger and more diverse data set might be needed, including real-world images that introduce greater entropy and variability. Implementing such a system would provide workers and companies with a proactive measure against workplace accidents, thereby enhancing overall safety in occupational environments.

    Keywords: occupational risk 1, prevention 2, convolutional neural networks 3, image recognition 4, classification 5

    Received: 12 May 2024; Accepted: 29 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Román-Gallego, Pérez -Delgado, Conde-González and Luengo-Viñuela. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Jesús-Ángel Román-Gallego, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.