Going through the archives of WOMBATT we came across an interesting article written by WOMBATT’s CEO, Jean Verhardt, which talks about the foundation of our company and how a city in Peru has become a part in pioneering fatigue management by using space technology. And to intrigue you with some additional history of the technology and city.

This week, a delegation of six mining managers and mining engineers from the Debswana Diamond Mining Company in Botswana, Africa visited the El Brocal mine in Cerro de Pasco, Peru, looking for a solution to the problem of haul truck driver fatigue in their mines in Botswana, Africa. Debswana has been searching the world for the past two years looking for a solution to driver fatigue, and has found the answer to the problem in Cerro de Pasco, Peru. The solution to driver fatigue trialled and implemented at the El Brocal mine near Cerro de Pasco since 2009 is based on Space technology provided to WOMBATT Peru S.A.C. by the European Space Agency (ESA). 

The town of Cerro de Pasco, capital city of Pasco province, Peru, rates just 10 lines in the Lonely Planet tourist guidebook to Peru. Cusco, another town located on the high Peruvian Altiplano, rates an impressive 65 pages of the book. Yet Cerro de Pasco was a much more important city in the history of the world than any other city of Peru. One of the great attractions of Peru to the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century was gold and silver treasure found in quantities never before seen in the history of the world. While much of the gold was mined in the hills and valleys of Cajamarca, the vast bulk of the silver was mined by the Incas and others before them in and around Cerro de Pasco in Peru and Potosi in Bolivia, as well as the famous Aztec mines at Zacatecas in Mexico. The scale of the New World bullion which the Spanish sent across the Atlantic to Europe was so vast that it helped cause the one hundred years inflation of the 16th and 17th centuries, giving rise to vast fortunes throughout Hapsburg Europe, especially in the Netherlands, the financial centre of the Spanish Habsburg Empire. With the close connections at that time between Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, some of this new wealth found its way into England, creating the conditions and providing the capital that led eventually to the Industrial Revolution. 

So, as every high school student of British and European history knows so well, the historic city of Cerro de Pasco helped provide the seed capital for the Industrial Revolution, leading directly to the modern world with all its wonders which we see all around us today. And that is not the only connection that the town has with the Industrial Revolution. In 1816 Richard Trevithick, the famous British inventor of the steam locomotive and of the railway, arrived in Cerro de Pasco to maintain the steam boilers he had sold to the mine owners to pump water from the mines. He stayed for many years. 

Cerro de Pasco not only helped finance the creation of the modern world we enjoy today; the town also had as its resident for a time one of the great inventors who created it. 

I first saw Cerro de Pasco in 2009, from a hill on the road into town from Colquijirca. My ESA supported company, WOMBATT, had been given permission by the management of the El Brocal mine to trial a new method of predicting and preventing the fatigue of haul truck drivers, a cutting edge technology developed for use in the Space industry. As a student on the far side of the Pacific I had formed an image of Cerro de Pasco as a shining city of silver, high up in the distant Andes Mountains. But the poverty-stricken town that lay before me that day, under a cold grey sky matched by the grey concrete buildings, the grey, broken streets only partially concealed by a light dusting of snow, was a bitter disappointment. 

My trip to Cerro de Pasco had started many years earlier, in the far off city of Adelaide, in South Australia. In September, 1977, the interplanetary spaceship Voyager 1 blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, took a spin around the moon to gain speed, and set off on a 4 year mission to map the planet Jupiter and all her moons. One month later, Voyager 2 was launched on the same track and set off after Voyager 1. 

Years passed by. 

During the long voyage, the quality of the radio signals received on earth from the two spacecraft began to deteriorate due to interference from asteroids in the vast asteroid belt which lies between Mars and Jupiter. Signals from the spacecraft were being received by the antennas of the Deep Space Network (DSN), based in Australia, Spain and California and sent directly to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. Member universities of the DSN consortium then began a desperate quest to find a solution to the degrading quality of signals being transmitted by the Voyager spaceships, so that the mission would be a success when the spacecraft finally reached Jupiter. During this research process they discovered a ground breaking new digital signal processing technique known as Turbo Coding, which could be used to pick up fading radio signals, spin them through a mathematical turbo algorithm, and produce a crisp clear signal, of as high a quality as it was the day it left the spaceship. This technology is today an important part of the radio receiver technology used by mobile smart phones in pockets and purses all over the world. 

The Voyager mission to Jupiter was spectacularly successful, and as the spaceships were still in great condition the mission was extended beyond Jupiter to map the rest of the outer planets. This second mission was also successful and the spaceships were then given a third and final mission by the JPL; to map the Heliopause, the outer limits of the solar system, where the solar wind fades and dies and is replaced by Interstellar Space. 

On 2013 Voyager 1 passed right through the Heliopause and is today in Interstellar space, 24 billion kilometres from Earth…the first human object ever to leave the solar system. Voyager 2 is not far behind. If we were on one of the spaceships today, the sun would look no bigger than a bright star, just one of 200 billion other stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The radio message takes 22 hours to reach Earth, and is transmitted by a 1970’s era radio transmitter 7500 times less powerful that an average modern smart phone, which uses technology developed specifically by and for the Voyager mission. 

The University of South Australia was a member of the Deep Space Network consortium that solved the turbo coding problem, and some of the scientists involved became my partners in the university spinoff company DSpace Pty Ltd, which based its business on the turbo coding algorithm. After a time we sold the company to an American defence contractor, and my technology development company EstrellaSat was granted a licence to develop the technology for commercial purposes. EstrellaSat gained admission into the European Space Agency Business Incubation Initiative to develop the technology for mining, and the El Brocal mine near Cerro de Pasco was the site of the field development of the new technology. 

In the years since, the technology has matured, and the El Brocal mine is now recognised worldwide as a world leader in the field of haul truck driver fatigue elimination. When the Debswana driver fatigue engineers found the El Brocal mine after years of searching the world for a solution to the driver fatigue problem, they decided to come to Cerro de Pasco themselves and take a look. 

So once again, Cerro de Pasco is a city at the global forefront of high technology, leading to a better world for all mankind. 

Jean S Verhardt, Lima, November, 201Jean S Verhardt, Lima, November, 2014

We look into the latest articles on sleep and fatigue to interpret them for our audience and WOMBATT-VOZ users, in order to make sure that you can benefit from the latest sleep research for your personal fatigue management. We recently came across an interesting research which dives into the relation between sleep and decision making. Here is some food for thought..

Question: What is the effect of sleep deprivation on response error in a fast changing situation?

Background

Many of the most well-known cases of fatal accidents due to sleep deprivation were proven to be caused by a sleep deprived condition known as “Cognitive Tunnel Vision”, or an inability to think quickly outside the box. These incidents include the BP Texas City explosion in 2005, the USS John S McCain accident in Singapore in 2017, and the Latam Airlines accident at Lima Airport in Peru in 2022.  Recent research (July 2023) conducted with the US Air Force by Washington State University in the US and Monash University in Australia has shown that sleep deprived persons also respond less accurately to fast changing situations than well rested people. So in addition to being less able to recognize a fast changing situation, tired people tend to make the wrong choices when they do actually react to a dynamic situation.

Research Results

Sleep deprivation research shows that some cognitive functions such as working memory and semantic encoding (using memory to understand a dynamic situation via experience or training), are less affected by sleep deprivation. In other words, performance in carrying out familiar tasks is less affected by sleep loss than performance in unfamiliar tasks. But when the task requires a fast response to a dynamic situation, the risk of errors and accidents is significantly higher in a sleep deprived person than with a well rested person. 

In operational settings, workers and drivers often face the need to balance competing task demands, such as maintaining performance accuracy while negotiating time pressure. Very often, the requirement is to react both accurately and fast. In the research, people in the well rested condition were able to handle both requirements – speed and accuracy – reasonably well. By contrast, people in a sleep deprived condition experienced increased errors. In a surprising twist, sleep deprived people often actually react faster than well rested people, but are then more often wrong.  Tasks that require significant attentional control to perform well, such as driving, operating machinery, or as in the research, flying military aircraft, are especially sensitive to sleep loss error when time pressure is involved. Sleep deprived drivers of semi-autonomous vehicles may be highly prone to error under fast changing road conditions when the vehicle suddenly hands back control to the driver.

One of the key solutions to safety at work or at home is being able to take a powernap when your body needs it most. A powernap is a short 15-20 minute nap that helps revitalize your brain to generate alertness. The powernap protects you from reaching a dangerous level of fatigue in which your body will take the reins and initiate a powernap of its own, the mircosleep. This is a programming of our body, we would rather not have take place when we are driving home, operating machinery or performing other activities that require alertness. 

So how do we know we need to take a powernap? and what’s the science behind it? Questions we aim to answer and summarize in this blog post.  

How do I know I have to take a powernap?

The powernap in general is a 20 minute nap, some people take a powernap daily to get through that afternoon dip caused by our body clock. However, we are talking about the powernap that from a safety perspective can save your life. So what is the difference? Well, there is no difference in the nap itself but there is a difference in the state of your body depending on your sleep and nap history. So you could be a regular “powernapper” with the skills to perform it without it affecting your night sleep, or you could be someone who does not take any naps in general and sleeps less than the amount your body requires. So if you are part of the second group, then knowing when to take a powernap is crucial. 

Imagine this, you are working regular hours, leaving home from 07:00AM, starting work at 08:00AM and finishing work at 16:30PM and arriving back home between 17:30PM and 18:00PM. The evening is then filled with preparing dinner, having dinner and enjoying the rest of your evening. Let’s say for this case your evening is full of activities, such as sporting, second job, volunteering etc. You then wind down at 23:00PM and fall asleep sometime after midnight. This gives your body about 6 hours of sleep or maybe even less. This goes on for days, maybe even weeks. It all seems to be going well, though as more time passes, the more you realize your mood may start to change, you may become more irritable, you have a frequent feeling of tiredness and low motivation. This feeling however is something you are experiencing daily. 

Our Physiology

Our body is designed for about 7 hours of sleep, some of us need a bit a more, and others can operate perfectly on less. But for the majority, this is 7 hours. So if your physiology is like that of the majority in our case, you are lending about 1 hour of sleep every single day from your body. This means you are building up a sleep debt. The effects of a sleep debt take some time before surfacing, and it is also quite difficult to tell if you are actually feeling fatigued. The thing is, you don’t perse feel fatigued at the time your body may require a powernap, so that makes it extremely hard for us. 

So back to the question, how do we know when to take that powernap? The key is to looking at the signs of fatigue, so your changing mood or constant feeling of tiredness and lack of motivation. If you are experiencing this, then your body is well on its way to being chronically fatigued. In this case a powernap during your natural body clock’s dip, so at around 15:00PM or if you’re on nightshift, around 03:00AM then that would be a good place to start. This is in the event you are not perse feeling the need to sleep but that you are experiencing the overall symptoms of fatigue. This will protect you from developing a point in which a microsleep can creep up on you. 

If you are experiencing an acute sensation of sleepiness and are starting to nod off, then take that powernap without delay. Set it for 20 minutes and you will be back up with the energy you need to get you through your drive home, or that last bit of work that needs to be done. Powernaps have the potential to save lives so use them is our advice. 

Technologies to help us out

If you are having difficulty in identifying fatigue within yourself try and see if you can match the symptoms related to fatigue to what you are feeling. Fatigue is something that comes from the brain so it is not always visible on the outside. There are however technologies to help assist you. All new cars are fitted with fatigue detection measures to keep you alert on the road so if you have a car that can tell you “Take a coffee break” then be sure to follow the cues to be on the safe side. The WOMBATT-VOZ is also a great tool to predict fatigue, so this tool can really guide you in the ‘When’ to take that powernap. By using a traffic light system you can know when your body needs an urgent powernap, or if it could do with one to simply boost your alertness as a potential ‘Red’ may lie ahead. 

The science

The last question is what is the science behind the powernap?

The powernap occurs in the light sleep stage, during this stage it is thought that your brain registers newly acquired information. A fun fact is that Thomas Edison used to take power naps when he was stuck on a problem. His conclusion was that after his nap he would be able to find a solution to his problem prior to the nap. Recent studies have tried to replicate his theory and have found that in fact creativity does increase when people wake up after being in a light sleep and before entering the deep sleep. Edison would hold some marbles in his hand while taking a nap in his chair, as soon as the marbles would hit the floor after he fell asleep, he would immediately awaken again with that burst of creativity. Though powernaps are good for more, they can also boost cognitive performance and memory as well as lowering stress and increasing your mood. All in all a powernap is a very efficient way to make the most out of your day as well as keeping you safe!

Conclusion

However, a powernap is not a substitute for adequate sleep. So improve your overall sleep quality and a powernap can in that case just be an added value from time to time and if adequate sleep is difficult then it will get you through the acute fatigue occurrences so that you can follow up to provide your body with adequate sleep again. 

We look into the latest articles on sleep and fatigue and to interprete them for our audience and WOMBATT-VOZ users, in order to make sure that you can benefit from the latest sleep research for your personal fatigue management. We recently came across an interesting article which dives into why it is that we can so easily sleep on the sofa, but when it’s time to actually go to bed we’re wide awake. 

Most of us know exactly how this feels, and more importantly how frustrating it is. It’s been a long day, you sit down on your comfy sofa with the tv on and before you know it you’ve dozed off. 

At WOMBATT we understand the science behind this. It’s not just the cosiness of your sofa that puts you to sleep but it’s actually a combination of factors such as sleep pressure, circadian rhythm and your environment. 

Unveiling sleep pressure

Sleep pressure is something you may not have heard of before, but it is exactly what it sounds like and it’s generated by our bodies. As the day progresses, sleep pressure builds up and is what drives us to go to sleep at the end of the day. Along with this pressure, your body clock is also sending signals that it’s time to go to sleep, for instance if it is dark outside your body is already preparing to go to sleep. 

So all in all this is exactly what we need to go to sleep at the end of the day, but the sofa, instead of progressing into the normal nightly sleep cycle, disrupts this process because the cycle was meant to initiate after going to bed and not before. Then when you wake up after your nap on the sofa depending on the length of your nap, your body has been given the chance to build up energy and keep you awake. It’s like taking a power nap, setting you up for a few hours of alertness again.

The critical role of nap timing

Depending on the length of your nap on the sofa it can play a role in how easily you will fall asleep again afterwards. If the nap was only 5 minutes, then the sleep pressure behind it has not been able to reduce enough for it to make a difference to your desire to fall asleep. However if your nap was about 20-30 minutes the length of a power nap, well then you have regained quite some alertness, making sleep difficult shortly after such a nap. If your nap on the sofa was disrupted in the middle of one your body’s 90 minute sleep cycles, you may find it easier to go back to sleep once you are actually in bed because when you woke up from your nap, you were in the deep sleep stage and your body had not completed with that particular 90 minutes sleep cycle.

Transitioning matters

The timing of your nap plays a critical role, however, transitioning from the sofa to the bed, especially with bright lights can awaken the brain, making subsequent sleep challenging.

Another factor that may affect your ability to sleep in bed is sleep stress – worry and anxiety to fall asleep on time is what makes sleeping on the sofa easier than in bed. On the sofa we are not worried yet about “I only have 5 hours until my alarm goes off, I need to sleep now”. Many of us put this pressure on ourselves when we enter our beds and prepare for our nightly rest. Cortisol is the hormone that wakes us up early in the morning and provides us with alertness, however Cortisol is also the hormone that is generated by stress. So, stressing in bed will cause your brain to associate bed with alertness rather than sleepiness, as it does on the sofa. 

WOMBATT’s Advice for Superior Sleep

So now we know why we aren’t falling asleep in bed but we are on the sofa, let’s explore how to make the bed more inviting. 

Consider creating a sleep-conducive environment – dark, quiet, and comfortable. Create a bedtime routine which helps prepares your brain to send the sleepiness signals at the time you need it, which is in bed. Make sure your routine is consistent, train your brain. And as tempting as it is, resist the urge to scroll through your phone in bed; the blue light and stimulating content can disrupt your sleep. 

In essence, at WOMBATT, we advise you to create a good sleep routine to enhance your sleep. By prioritizing a restful environment and mindful pre-sleep habits, you’ll maximize the benefits of a good night’s sleep in your own bed. 

Ready to explore the latest scientific insights on fatigue and its potential to transform our approach to this issue? In our examination of fatigue-related accidents, it’s evident that a significant portion involves young drivers, prompting the European Union to initiate in-depth studies. Moreover, a recent survey by the National Sleep Foundation in the US revealed that 1 in 6 teens are driving while drowsy. Astonishingly, many of the surveyed teens perceive drowsy driving as less hazardous than drunk or distracted driving.

Executive Insight: Are Young Drivers More Prone to Driving Fatigue With Monotonous Driving?

Picture this: a question that challenges conventional wisdom. Do young drivers, aged 20 to 35, experience more sleepiness and decreased alertness during monotonous driving than their middle-aged counterparts, aged 45 to 60? Prepare to be amazed because the answer is a resounding YES!

Uncover the Backstory

Statistics reveal a startling trend – younger professional drivers face a higher risk of accidents compared to their older counterparts. And here’s the twist: many of these accidents are closely linked to increased sleepiness levels. Recent scientific breakthroughs have unveiled this surprising truth: young professional drivers are more prone to losing alertness in monotonous driving conditions than their middle-aged peers. They even have a stronger inclination to nod off during monotonous night time drives.

Two comprehensive studies, where all participants were medically evaluated and shared similar sleep histories, led us to this eye-opening conclusion.

The Revelations

Younger drivers grapple more with staying alert in low-traffic situations compared to their older counterparts. When the sun sets and the road ahead turns monotonous, they are more likely to battle sleepiness. However, it’s important to note that older drivers also struggle more with night time fatigue in general than with day time driving.

In heavy traffic, the fatigue levels between the two age groups tend to equalize. To sum it up, monotonous driving poses a more significant fatigue challenge for young drivers than their older counterparts, with sleepiness reaching its peak among the younger generation during night time drives.

These 2 words usually don’t go well in the same sentence, however, we’re going to tell you why they do. Coffee is in fact a good source of energy for your body and it doesn’t have to effect your sleep if consumed moderately.

Coffee contains caffeine which is a stimulant. This means it raises levels of physiological or nervous activity in the body. It is absorbed through your stomach and small intestine and enters the blood stream. It then travels to your brain where it meets the adenosine receptor. Adenosine is found in the brain and is accumulated during waking hours as it is a product produced from your own alertness. It’s what makes you sleepy as the day (or nightshift) progresses. Caffeine however interferes with this process and blocks it, which is why you feel awake and alert shortly after consuming a nice cup of coffee (with caffeine).

In terms of staying awake on the job or while driving, caffeinated coffee helps extend your wakefulness and alertness. This however is also the reason that you should avoid it preferably a few hours before going to bed.

Now that we’ve uncovered the science behind caffeine and what it does in our body, what health benefits does coffee have to offer us to make it the right choice and how does sleep fit into it?

Jam packed with antioxidants

Coffee has been studied quite a lot and has seen a few ups and downs in terms of healthy and not healthy outcomes. Luckily for all of us who appreciate our coffee, the science has shown coffee has a lot to offer us, antioxidants to start with. Unprocessed coffee beans have been found to pack more than 1000 antioxidants with hundreds more developing during the roasting process. Because coffee is so widely consumed in our society it makes our cup of brown energy a leading source for consuming antioxidants!

Our current society is always looking for super foods which pack a lot of antioxidants, but why are we so keen on this additional substance in our foods? Well antioxidants are a substance that may protect your cells against free radicals. A free radical is a molecule which is produced when your body breaks down food or even when you’re exposed to smoke. Free radicals in our bodies may play a role with regards to heart disease, cancer and many other diseases. To back this up with in terms of coffee intake, a study has shown that the test group who drink coffee were 19% less likely to die of heart disease and 18% less likely to develop cancer. Another study shows that antioxidants in coffee also have a positive affect in minimizing the risk of developing diabetes type 2 which is also a disease in which free radicals play a role; however studies are showing that coffee, both caffeinated and decaf, can do a lot more in the prevention of this particular disease too.

Coffee is also food for your brain

The research on coffee just keeps getting better in favour of coffee. Research published in Florida in 2012 has shown that regular coffee intake of about 3 cups a day reduces the risk of severe dementia including Alzheimer’s disease.

Although the reason for this is not yet clear, scientists do have a working theory as to the how and why. Without getting too technical, caffeine from coffee prevents a certain process in the brain that may contribute to the onset and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.

Research shows that coffee has even more great benefits for your health. However, the above have been highlighted because sleep also reduces the risk to all these diseases and improves overall health and well-being. 

So when we’re looking at coffee and sleep in the same sentence, they make perfect sense together. 

Academic studies have shown people are capable of recognizing fatigue in themselves and in those around them. Especially in a work setting some people have even developed their own informal fatigue proofing strategies to help keep themselves and their co-workers safe.

Fatigue proofing is a method in which we are preventing fatigue such as drowsiness and sleepiness from causing a risk in our day to day business. A bit like using a waterproof rain coat to prevent your clothes from getting wet in the rain. Fatigue proofing strategies are primarily used by companies which are actively focussing on fatigue as a risk to their business and employees. They do this by implementing fatigue detection/prediction technologies and or implementing certain shift patterns. However, as the studies have shown, it is also something we tend to do ourselves just by looking out for each other. 

In a work setting, fatigue proofing among co-workers has been found to follow 2 themes, the first is when we pre-signal or tell colleagues about our elevated risk of fatigue, along the lines of “I didn’t sleep very well/a lot” or perhaps even “I’m feeling rather drowsy”. The second theme is if your job has little room for error which could cause a dangerous situation, colleagues critically look out for each other too based on errors. Both of these themes often lead to informal risk reduction action. An example would be a fatigued pilot coming in to land will alert the co-pilot and begin the decent earlier than planned, to allow increased reaction time by both pilots in case of possible fatigue related errors. Another academic study following power line workers shows that they engage more frequently in jokes and teasing in the early hours of the morning, which allows co-workers to detect any increased irritability in a worker, which is a sign of fatigue, leading in turn to informal intra group swap around to a less dangerous task.

Informal fatigue proofing strategies can really benefit a company’s risk management when they engage in it and support what is happening among colleagues. For example in the mining industry we’ve seen that in the early morning hours, during nightshift, drivers will talk to each other over the VHF radio as to help keep each other awake.  However, it is also something that we can easily implement in our daily life keeping ourselves, our family, friends and colleagues safe from accidents. Fatigue is the root cause of so many accidents around us and there are ways you can easily beat fatigue from causing an accident around you too. The thing to remember is even though we may not feel sleepy or feel it has an effect on us personally, it may just as well have an effect on the person driving in front of you.

In Australia the road signs preventing drowsy driving can be quite graphic which is a method of raising public awareness on the consequences of drowsy driving. Below is an example of such a method displayed in Queensland, Australia.