Speaking at IIR’s Minehaul conference in Perth yesterday, Bongers said 10 years from now technology suitable for minesites that could measure fatigue levels to 95% accuracy would be commercially available.
“We would be pretty stupid if we didn’t employ this technology. There are some delicate issues we need to address now so we can deal with the technology when it comes,” Bongers said.
These “delicate issues” include operator acceptance, job security, discrimination, union acceptance and privacy – all concerns a company must deal with before implementing operator fatigue technologies.
A number of commercial products have been developed over the past decade to tackle the operator fatigue problem, mostly using eye/head behaviour or operator response time to determine the level of fatigue. Bongers said a limitation of these technologies was the inability to cope with driver-to-driver variations.
With this in mind, CRCMining have been working on an EEG-based technique for the detection of physiological fatigue in haul truck drivers, which utilises a neural network classifier trained with data collected from multiple operators.
CRCMining and Bongers have done the initial groundwork of developing an EEG-based method, and are currently three months into a 12-month project to develop a lightweight, non-restrictive, non-intrusive and dry EEG recording system – with a design that resembles a standard baseball cap.
A baseball cap design, Bongers said, would be much more appropriate than present EEG procedure where, for example, a truck driver must wear a restrictive headset that is connected to up to 40 electrical wires trailing back to a brick-sized recording box. Additionally, abrasive, conductive gel is applied to the scalp at each sensor site, often causing local hair loss and bleeding.
Bongers said while the technology is being developed, the mining industry must also face the challenge of developing appropriate fatigue countermeasure strategies.
“Essentially, the industry will need to answer the question [of] what do you do once you know an operator is dangerously fatigued?”
One solution is to relieve the operator of their duties for that shift, or attempt to use an audible stimulus to “wake the operator” – neither of which meets the needs of the industry.
Industry must also gain operator acceptance of the technology – through education so both operators and management understand how it works.
“Opposition to such technology may also come from worker union groups. Although the main purpose of any fatigue detection and countermeasure strategies would be focused on operator safety, some measures may be misconstrued as not in the interest of the operator. In order for any technological solution to be practicable, the mining industry must work with operators and union groups to develop a mutually agreeable plan,” Bongers said.
Benefits of an accurate, workable fatigue measurement technology would be invaluable to the mining industry Bongers believes, especially in the current environment where the problem has been exacerbated by the combination of an ageing workforce and ever-increasing demands on operators to achieve production quotas.
Workable technology could reduce lost time injuries, increase operator safety and improve productivity.
