Professor Jean S Verhardt explores how AI-driven voice technology can help prevent accidents in industry.
In his recent Wall Street Journal bestseller ‘The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology’ (2023), author Tobias Dengel shows us how artificial intelligence (AI)-driven voice technology (voice tech) is on the verge of transforming the world we live in. No part of society and no corner of industry will be left untouched by the voice revolution. What we have already seen with voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are just the first gusts of a coming storm.
Together with the mega voice assistants from Silicon Valley, WOMBATT-Voz is one of the early practical applications of the marriage between artificial intelligence and voice technology. The objective for WOMBATT, in line with non-profit campaign Vision Zero, is to completely eliminate fatigue and sleep related accidents both on the road and in industry. Today, fatigue is the single biggest cause of accidents in mining and accounts for over 20% of all fatal accidents on the roads and highways of the world – an unacceptable 200,000 fatigue-related road fatalities each year.
The power of voice technology
A growing number of our daily activities involving control of the machines that are an everyday part of our lives, are already performed by auditory voice communications. A good example is cars and trucks. It is now possible using voice AI to verbally ask your car “Please check to see if I have left the iron on at home, and if so, turn it off”. The car will reply “Very well” and then check via the internet connected house computer whether the iron is on, and if so, turn it off. By the same token, using the new WOMBATT-Voz voice-based AI fatigue prediction technology installed as an app on your mobile phone and connected to the car’s AI system, your voice can be analysed to detect early signs of fatigue, predicting your actual fatigue risk level up to five hours ahead with more than 90% accuracy.
If you have had insufficient sleep to maintain peak driving alertness, the car or truck, using WOMBATT-Voz either via the driver’s connected smartphone or integrated into the vehicle’s onboard systems, will immediately alert you and suggest a stop and powernap. Plus, at the same time, sending an email or SMS to anyone else you nominate, such as your supervisor or spouse.
How does it work?
The human voice is one of the most complex systems in nature and originates from the virtually infinite physical elements and waveform variations of an auditory quantum state. One can think of a wave breaking onto a beach every few seconds for millions of years. Each wave contains information about a vast range of contributory factors such as far off storms, passing boats, swimmers, seabirds, fish and even raindrops, and no wave for the rest of time will ever be exactly repeated. But a wave created by a nearby passing boat has recognisably different elements as it arrives on the beach to one created by a faraway storm in the middle of the ocean.
The same occurs with the voice, which is a window into the entire human neuromuscular system. Each few seconds of voice contains an enormous amount of data regarding the condition of the body, including neuromuscular related diseases and conditions such as Parkinson disease, ALS, MS, the influence of drugs such as alcohol and many others.
One of the conditions which can be detected in the voice is fatigue due to sleep deprivation. Of all the untold millions of elements existing in the voice, many thousands of them can now be detected using the latest microphone and digital processing power contained in modern smartphones and tablets, connected via GSM, Wi-Fi or satellite to the world’s most advanced AI fatigue algorithm.
Eliminating fatigue
Around 200 voice elements, out of the thousands currently detectable in the human voice, denote tiredness and fatigue due to sleep deprivation. With the release of Apple IOS 6 in 2014 and Android 6 Marshmallow in 2015, smartphone microprocessor and microphone technology reached a point where these 200 fatigue elements could be detected in everyday life with the consumer smartphones that everybody carries about with them all day every day. The average smartphone today has 100,000 times more processing power than a personal computer from only a few decades ago, with microphones now so accurate and sensitive that the slightest and most fleeting elements of any sound can be captured, recorded and transmitted.
For the first time ever, a technology exists whereby people can predict their own fatigue risk many hours in advance with more than 90% accuracy, using their own mobile device. Because the AI algorithm learns each person’s unique individual voice characteristics, accuracy is far higher than older technologies and is continually improving as the algorithm learns and understands more of each person’s individual voice over time.
The huge technological advance of WOMBATT’s voice-based fatigue risk prediction over camera, wearable and vehicle movement fatigue detection technologies means that the objective of Vision Zero – zero deaths due to fatigue, is now within reach in mines, on the roads and throughout industry across the world.
Jean S Verhardt is founder and CEO of WOMBATT Fatigue Management.
