We are often unaware of our own fatigue and unable to measure it, yet it clearly impacts our health. At first, I was sceptical about how my voice could reveal my fatigue level. However, after using WOMBATT daily and adjusting my rest and family routines, I noticed significant improvements in my health, work performance, and relationships at home and at work. WOMBATT is simple to implement, your voice is all it takes. Since each person’s voice is unique and cannot be altered or faked, it offers a reliable measure of fatigue. The process is easy, you read a 15-second script at the start of your shift, after meals, and at the end of your day. In just 60 seconds, you gain valuable insight into your fatigue level. This system empowers you to make life changes that support optimal health and rest. From an operational standpoint, I observed a marked improvement in mobile equipment operators, they were more alert and focused on their tasks. Initially, safety incidents occurred daily. Over time, they dropped to weekly, then monthly, and eventually every few months, with a noticeable decrease in severity. The union appreciated that we prioritised employee well-being. Since the method is non-invasive, operators quickly embraced it. In fact, they began requesting their WOMBATT voice checks to ensure they were fit to work. In my view, WOMBATT is a simple yet powerful solution to a complex issue. Fatigue is invisible—but its consequences are not.

I believe it is the only system on the market that is a predictive tool for identifying fatigue before it leads to an incident. Which then teaches the user to become the predictor and ultimately make changes to their lifestyle and create better habits to prevent fatigue events. Once this happens, you are then able to optimize time and resources to work with leading indicators vs. time and resources chasing lagging indicators and not solving the root problem. The root problem in my opinion is operators not fully understanding what is inhibiting proper rest or how much they truly need, or partially a suboptimal schedule that could be changed.

My name is Kirk Zerkel, I am the owner of a Contract Mining company based in Alaska, USA. We operate fleets of large heavy civil equipment, including large mining trucks in surface mines in the Northwest States of the US. The nature of our work is that we have operators of large mine trucks/equipment, working long hours throughout the year. Winters in Alaska are long, dark and cold, and our operators spend up to 12 hours each shift operating in dark conditions on slick roads. Fatigue is a major factor for us. The WOMBATT system has significantly improved our ability to monitor our drivers and keep them safe. As a proactive vs reactive system, we now have the ability to identify individuals who may be starting to feel fatigued, before an incident can occur. I highly suggest the use of WOMBATT-VOZ.

We are particularly excited by the potential of the WOMBATT forward-looking AI fatigue prediction technology with our owner operator fleet of drivers. With over 450 drivers covering in excess of 20 million kilometres per year, often in harsh and unrelenting landscapes and geography, the detection of fatigue proactively is a necessity. We look forward to a successful conclusion of the pilot, under the guidance of our assurance and innovation lead Steven McGarry and a subsequent roll out to other areas of our business.

Astronaut fatigue has been found to be one of the key risk factors for long duration manned missions in Space. It has been known for some time that fatigue can be very accurately detected from computer analysis of a short voice recording, so after examining all other fatigue detection technologies the European Space Agency (ESA) funded a feasibility study funded called iVOICE. The iVOICE voice project based fatigue detection technology for use in long range manned missions to Mars and other planets. Under the Downstream Business Applications programme (Artes 20 programme) ESA contracted WOMBATT Fatigue Management Ltd (UK) to commercialise the technology for use on Earth. ESA has conducted a comprehensive Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) for WOMBATTs commercial version of the iVOICE fatigue technology. The WOMBATT iVOICE system passed the ESA FAT test and is currently being deployed commercially at mining sites and in airport air traffic control centres around the world.

Operator fatigue is a key business risk in the mining industry, and the industry is constantly searching for more accurate, economical and unobtrusive ways to detect fatigue. We believe that the new voice-based fatigue detection technology being developed and commercialized by WOMBATT has significant potential in the mining industry to help solve the operator fatigue problem. We are interested to examine the new system when it becomes commercially available, for use at our mining projects in Peru and elsewhere. Yours faithfully STRACON S.A.