About Us
"23 years of experience preventing worker and driver fatigue in WOMBATT Projects and customers all over the world"
WOMBATT Fatigue Management started in Adelaide, Australia in 2000 as a spinout from the University of South Australia’s Institute for Telecommunications research, introducing to the mining industry a groundbreaking new DWAM Inmarsat broadband satellite communications technology connecting mining haul trucks in remote mines with central control centres located often hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the mine.
In 2009 WOMBATT was admitted into the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre (BIC) located at ESA’s ESTEC facility in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, to develop WOMBATT’s proprietary and patented EMDP technology to integrate third party driver fatigue detection equipment fitted on board mining haul trucks to a remotely located fatigue monitoring centre. Our first customer was mining contractor STRACON Ltd, operating at the El Brocal polymetallic mine in Cerro de Pasco, Peru.
Then during 2014, ESA asked WOMBATT to participate as a subcontractor in ESA’s development of what became known as WOMBATT-VOZ, a voice based fatigue prediction technology designed to manage the fatigue of astronauts on long range missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. In 2019 ESA awarded WOMBATT a prime contract under the ESA Artes20 programme to adapt the innovative new fatigue prediction technology, which passed ESA’s exacting Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) in January 2020.
WOMBATT offers a unique solution for fatigue management using advanced artificial intelligence technology, which has been adapted in industries such as mining, steel mills, road transport, aviation and civil engineering. The ongoing support from ESA over the years has been crucial for WOMBATT’s success and growth.
Our vision & Goals
We envision a world where people are able to work safely and efficiently without the threat of fatigue endangering their lives or the lives of others. We believe that our technology, the WOMBATT-VOZ system, has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach fatigue management and prevent fatigue-related accidents.
“Our goal is to provide businesses with accurate and actionable insights into their employees’ fatigue levels allowing them to proactively address potential safety hazards and improve overall well-being.”
Jean S Verhardt
Founder & CEO
Testimonials
What the customers say:
Managing Director, BE DHL Oman
"In Oman, our drivers travel long distances through harsh environments on monotonous roads. As we continue our journey to ensure the safety of our drivers, it has been great to finally start a trial with the Wombatt fatigue prediction technology with one of our cargo haulage contractors. The predictive technology will allow us to effectively avoid the risks of driver fatigue whilst planning our journeys. We look forward to concluding the trial and where successful role this out to all employees, not just drivers"
Senior Assurance & Innovation Manager, Bahwan Exel DHL
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.
Head of Innovation and Ventures Office, TIA - AI Downstream Business Apllications Department, Directorate of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications, ESA
"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."
P.E. | President, AAP, LLC
"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"
"Operational staff fatigue is a key business risk in the Air Traffic Control service and is constantly searching for more accurate, economical and unobtrusive ways to detect fatigue. The WOMBATT-VOZ voice based fatigue detection technology that is developed and commercialized by WOMBATT, has had a good reception by the Air Traffic Controllers in CORPAC S.A. We recommend WOMBATT's technology and we would like to incorporate it into the INDRA radar system in order to make fatigue detection more effective for the Air Traffic Controllers"
Lima Airport, Peru
"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."
Chief Executive Officer, STRACON S.A.
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"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"