Leveraging Reinforcement Learning for Generating Construction Workers' Moving Path: Opportunities and Challenges

Travel distance is a parameter mainly used in the objective function of Construction Site Layout Planning (CSLP) automation models. To obtain travel distance, common approaches, such as linear distance, shortest-distance algorithm, visibility graph, and access road path, concentrate only on identifying the shortest path. However, humans do not necessarily follow one shortest path but can choose a safer and more comfortable path according to their situation within a reasonable range. Thus, paths generated by these approaches may be different from the actual paths of the workers, which may cause a decrease in the reliability of the optimized construction site layout. To solve this problem, this paper adopts reinforcement learning (RL) inspired by various concepts of cognitive science and behavioral psychology to generate a realistic path that mimics the decision-making and behavioral processes of wayfinding of workers on the construction site. To do so, in this paper, the collection of human wayfinding tendencies and the characteristics of the walking environment of construction sites are investigated and the importance of taking these into account in simulating the actual path of workers is emphasized. Furthermore, a simulation developed by mapping the identified tendencies to the reward design shows that the RL agent behaves like a real construction worker. Based on the research findings, some opportunities and challenges were proposed. This study contributes to simulating the potential path of workers based on deep RL, which can be utilized to calculate the travel distance of CSLP automation models, contributing to providing more reliable solutions.