Testing our IoT-based site monitoring and productivity solutions

We deployed multiple phones, not just for redundancy (given how rare and valuable these site access opportunities are) but also to experiment with different anchoring positions, explore various IoT applications simultaneously, and live cloud computing data transmission.

Despite the meticulous prep we had, the field always humbles you:

-  "Plug and play" felt like anything but Plug & Play. Installation and set up was trickier than expected.
- Connectivity (4G/5G) was a major challenge, preventing us from remotely checking sensors' status despite the site being very close to residential areas.
- While our IoT sensors store data locally, we couldn’t tell which ones were actively collecting during the live experiments due to poor connection. Luckily, two+ devices successfully captured data in each experiment.

At the end, we successfully gathered very valuable data that we look forward to analysing

This experience challenges a common narrative in academic literature: that every Digital Twin (DT) system operates in real time. In practice, real-time functionality is fragile. It depends on infrastructure, edge conditions, and often unpredictable field realities.

A huge thank you to the whole team especially colleagues Dr. Sneha Verma and Dr. Xiang Xie from Newcastle University for leading the effort, and Dr Dean Douglas and Wahib Saif Said from Okana for their involvement in the experiments.

A very special and deeply grateful thank-you to Komatsu and especially Rob for allowing us to run this trial on-site and actively supporting and running it with us.

This work is part of Innovate UK's funded project on Digital Twin for Construction Site Monitoring, in collaboration with Okana, xbim Ltd, Northumbria University, and Gray Fox Consulting.

hashtag#IoT hashtag#ConstructionTech hashtag#SiteMonitoring hashtag#Productivity hashtag#EdgeComputing hashtag#DigitalTWin hashtag#CloudIntegration hashtag#Komatsu hashtag#FieldTesting hashtag#NUDiceLab

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7327404943923924993/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A(activity%3A7327404943923924993%2C7327630463852847105)&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A(7327630463852847105%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7327404943923924993)&origin=COMMENTS_BY_YOUR_NETWORK

Last modified: Tue, 13 May 2025 16:28:00 BST