Aurora Flight Sciences, under contract to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), studied the feasibility of autonomously monitoring and combating train engineer fatigue. This program is called Monitoring Engineer Fatigue (MEFA). Research and testing at the FRA's Cab Technology Integration Laboratory confirmed that identifying fatigue through physiological cues through a variety of detection sensors is plausible. RGBD (color + depth) cameras were used to detect facial features for key points of interest - mainly eye and mouth movements. Researchers parsed an activity within the general code of operating rules (GCOR) into a logical step-by-step procedure, which could then be presented to Aurora's procedure execution module. The biggest area for improvement is the method by which fatigued engineers are analyzed. Researchers recommend future work include an analysis of engineers who are actively fatigued. Relying instead on actors would increase the risk of developing a brittle algorithm.
In the future, operators of complex equipment will spend more time monitoring computer controlled devices rather than having hands on control of such ...
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