International Women’s Day: What their contribution brings to the roads industry

What has been your involvement in the Roads Research Alliance to date?

Chapa: “I've been working on the safety of heavy machinery, looking at how we can get people closer to the machines without getting harmed. This includes machines in an indoor and outdoor environment.

“There’s a huge risk of accidents when a human and a machine work closely together, such as heavy machines running over people.

“I’m looking into how robotics can support in making this safer and how they can prevent accidents from happening by analysing human behaviour. I’m also looking into how equipment could be worn by the worker, so it can alarm the driver or worker if they’re in danger.

“It’s about improving the existing software platforms and developing human-assistive hardware units for workers and machines to make them more sensitive to their immediate environment.”

Yue: “My background is in computer science. My research uses machine learning or artificial intelligence tools, looking at ways to improve traffic management to have a smoother flow. There’s a particular challenge about how this works with the increase in autonomous vehicles on the roads. This also supports our aim towards net zero. There’s a research gap that I’m filling.”

What’s the next milestone in the project?

Chapa: “I have developed algorithms, simulations and several hardware equipment that can be used in construction environments to monitor the fields in terms of human-machine interaction.

“The next step would be to implement the research onto a real machine and see how it goes, and there's a lot of concerns around that because it needs a lot of safety approvals and then have to fine tune it to go with the standards and then a lot of ethics around it.

“If I develop something that a person has to wear, then it must go through a lot of ethics approvals so it can be shown that the technology is safe. It must comply with industry standards, and there’s a lot of documentation to go through, which takes time.”

Yue: “My hope is that the industry will use our research to move forwards and becomes more willing to communicate with us. We understand that there are real-word constraints that can stop the progression of the research, but we massively benefit from the engagement with the industry to help us gain real-world data that we can use. If we don’t get this, we have to use synthetic data, which isn’t as powerful.”

How do you feel about being a woman making a positive impact in the roads industry?

Chapa: “I'm considering the social aspect of the workers in my research, which has not received much attention so far. I believe that, statistics wise, women can now contribute more towards social community associated work than ever before.

“Looking at how construction robotics can pay attention to how people behave, which is something new that I’ve added to the robotics field, which I’m proud of.”

Yue: “Women are very under-represented in this field; around 16% are female. You can see it first-hand when you look around our lab. Chapa and I developed the ‘Women in Robotics’ group at the University of Cambridge, which is encouraging more women in the industry to enter the field.”

Why do you think it important to have more women working in this industry?

Chapa: “If the technology that we’re developing is to be used by both genders, the technology should be developed by both genders to consider the requirements of both perspectives.

“Men and women can possess different skills. Traditionally, men can be very good at the mathematical side of the work. Whereas women have strength in seeing how these designs can be integrated into the society and the emotional side of something so it's more human friendly.”

Yue: “As women, we’re good at communicating, we’re open-minded, we’re willing to talk, and we’re to the point. I’d love to see more women in the industry sharing their qualities.”

Which women in the industry inspire you?

Chapa: “The first person that comes to mind is Nicolette Formosa from National Highways – she’s a lead data scientist and one of my industry partners. She's won awards for her contribution to construction automation as a woman.

“Her projects are impressive. I looked through them when I was looking at how I could take inspiration in how I can pitch my project to industry. Because my experience is in academia, it has been really useful to learn from her the best practices to speak to industry.”

Yue: “Nicolette inspires me too, but another role model I have is Bola Olabisi. She runs a community called ‘GlobalWIIN’, which links together females in research.

“She’s super nice and generous; she invited us to present to their members about the ‘Women in Robotics’ robotics group. It’s a really useful network to share information and gain feedback. We even got to meet a mayor at one of her events.”

Find out more about their research.