Mobile and technological solutions for occupational drivers (MILESTONE).

Objective 1: Understanding the impact of personal state and contextual stressors, on driving behaviour and traffic safety aims to analyse the relationship between physiological and mental states (sleep quality, fatigue, sleepiness, stress, thermal comfort), general health, work-related factors, external stressors, and driving parameters linked with traffic safety. We examine how stress builds up for occupational drivers due to environmental conditions. We also analyse whether sleep quality, and combinations of stress, sleepiness and thermal comfort, can be estimated in controlled lab conditions using wearables; and furthermore whether this can also be continuously monitored in practical driving conditions using wearables combined with approaches from artificial intelligence. We identify external factors which are causing these different states throughout the day, and in real driving conditions, and its impact on driving behaviour and traffic safety. Deliverables are the development of a tool/app tailored to the living and working conditions of drivers, to monitor stress levels, sleepiness, thermal comfort levels 24/7; as well as more insight in the relation between stress, sleep quality and driving parameters (related to safety and eco-driving), and in external stressors, both trip- and work-related. Insights will be used to develop technological interventions in the following work packages. Objective 2: Development of system-level intervention to keep drivers within their 'stress tolerance zone' (STZ) aims to analyse the individual safe STZ, consisting of the personal stress (physiological and mental state) accumulated with contextual stress; and to develop a system-level intervention to keep drivers in a state of normal driving without too much stress, with the lowest possible risk of a crash scenario developing. The system-level intervention will be developed based on a user-centered design approach with gamification principles, focussing on acute and chronic stress, and different levels of employer's involvement. After workshops with drivers, the intervention will be developed and pilot tested by a small group of drivers based on usability/technical aspects. A dashboard will be developed, which will allow the employer to detect individual stress situations and driver's performance; and provide useful aggregated insights about the efficiency of the planning system. Objective 3: Development of job-facilitating solutions aims to work out several solutions to facilitate the occupational driver working conditions, based on the identified stressors, related to technological issues to improve the cabin domotics, the development of guidelines, and other (future) development opportunities. We will use the insights related to Objectives 1/2 as a basis for developing the solutions. Objective 4: Implementation of MILESTONE intervention and job-facilitating solutions aims to analyze the impact of the personalized intervention for drivers for different driver categories (long-haul, short-haul and local delivery), in relation to a control group, and for different feedback types. The impact of the job-facilitating solutions on drivers' experiences will be determined as well.

Keywords:SLEEP ENVIRONMENT, DRIVING SYSTEMS, TRAFFIC, SLEEP APNEA

Disciplines:Other (bio)medical engineering not elsewhere classified, Physiology not elsewhere classified, Respiratory medicine not elsewhere classified

Project type:Collaboration project