WorkerSense

Seed

Smart hard hats, safer sites

IoT-enabled hard hat sensors and analytics platform for construction site safety and productivity.

Founded January 2015Durham, NC2-10 people$250K raisedFeatured at Seed

IotConstructionWearablesSafetyHard TechSensorsWorkforce Management

About

WorkerSense provides a hard hat-mounted, cloud-connected wearable sensor (the T9) that collects over 11,400 data points per minute to deliver real-time construction site safety alerts, ergonomics recommendations, personnel tracking, and performance analytics. Founded in 2015 by Canyon Dell'Omo during his sophomore year at Duke University, the company started with hand-soldered prototypes built in a dorm room and tested on a Gilbane construction project on campus. Co-founder Daniel Eshaghian joined in 2018 to help scale the business. The sensors connect via LTE cellular, allowing managers to access site data from any device, and the WorkerSense COMMAND product runs on Apple TVs to visualize live job site information in a big-screen command center format. During COVID-19, the platform expanded to include social distancing monitoring and temperature-based symptom checking for construction crews. The company raised $250K from Dorm Room Fund and was recognized as a Top Construction Tech Startup by Construction Tech Review in 2020. WorkerSense appears to be no longer actively operating — founder Canyon Dell'Omo has since moved on to a product role at Tractian, an industrial IoT company.

DailyDropout Take

WorkerSense caught our eye as a classic dorm-room-to-construction-site story — Canyon Dell'Omo hand-soldered his first prototypes at Duke and tested them on a real job site on campus. The T9 sensor packed serious data density (11,400 points per minute) into a hard hat mount, and the COVID-19 pivot to social distancing monitoring showed adaptability. While the company appears to have wound down, it represented the wave of IoT innovation hitting one of the last analog industries.

Discovery signal: Student founder building hardware in a dorm room, real construction site pilot, Dorm Room Fund backing, COVID-era pivot to social distancing

What Makes Them Unique

WorkerSense was one of the first startups to embed IoT sensors directly into hard hats for construction safety and productivity tracking, collecting over 11,400 data points per minute with LTE connectivity — born from a Duke dorm room prototype tested on a real construction site.

11,400+

Data Points per Minute

24 hours

Sensor Battery Life

10.1%

Avg Production Boost

Target Markets

ConstructionMiningAgriculture

Founders

Canyon Dell'Omo

Co-Founder & CEO

Started WorkerSense in his Duke University dorm room during his sophomore year while studying Biomedical Engineering. Now Head of Product at Tractian.