Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea (대한인간공학회지)

Ergonomics Society of Korea (대한인간공학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Formant Frequency as a Measure of Physical Fatigue

  • Received : 2012.10.09
  • Accepted : 2013.01.11
  • Published : 2013.02.28
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

Objective: The current study investigated a non-obtrusive measure for detecting physical fatigue based on the analysis of formant frequencies of human voice. Background: Fatigue has been considered as a main cause in industrial and traffic accidents. Therefore, it is critical to detect worker's fatigue for accident prevention. Method: After running exercises on a treadmill, participants were instructed to read a sentence and their voices were recorded under four different physical fatigue levels. Korean vowels of "아", "어", "오", "우", and "이" from the voice recorded were then used to collect formant 1 frequencies. Results: Results of separate ANOVAs showed a significant main effect of physical fatigue on formant 1 frequency of "아", "어", and "이". Furthermore, post-hoc comparisons revealed that formant 1 frequency of "아" was most sensitive to physical fatigue level employed in this experiment. Conclusion: Formant 1 frequencies of some vowels significantly decrease as the physical fatigue level increases. Application: Potential application of this study includes the development of a measure of physical fatigue state that is free from sensor attachment and requires little preparation.

Keywords

References

  1. American College of Sports and Mediclne. Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, 6th ed. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000.
  2. Boersma, P. and Weenink, D., Praat: doing phonetics by computer, Praat Homepage, http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/, (retrieved June 20, 2012).
  3. Caffier, P.P., The Spontaneous Eye-Blink as Sleepiness Indicator in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea Syndrome-a Pilot Study, Sleep Medicine, 2, 155-162, 2002.
  4. Christensen, E.H., "Muscular Work and Fatigue", Ch. 9 in K. Rodahl and S. M. Horvath(eds.), Muscle as a Tissue, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1960.
  5. Fant, G., Acoustic Theory of Speech Production. Mouton & Co, The Hague, Netherlands, 1960.
  6. Krajewski, J., Wieland, R. and Batliner, A., An Acoustic Framework for Detecting Fatigue in Speech Based Human-Computer-Interaction. In K. Miesenberger et al.(eds), ICCHP '08 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, Springer-Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, 54-61, 2008.
  7. Melamed, S., Excessive Daytime Sleepiness and Risk of Occupational Injuries in Non-Shift Daytime Workers, Sleep, 25(3), 315-322, 2002. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/25.3.315
  8. Sommer, D., Chen, M., Golz, M., Trunschel, U. and Mandic, D., Fusion of State Space and Frequency Domain Features for Improved Microsleep Detection. In: W. Dutch et al.(Eds.), Int Conf Artifical Neural Networks(ICANN 2005), Springer: Berlin, 753-759, 2005.
  9. Stern, J.A., Boyer, D. and Schroeder D., Blink Rate: A Possible Measure of Fatigue, Human Factors, 36, 285-297, 1994. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872089403600209
  10. Titze, I.R., Principles of Voice Production, Prentice Hall, 1994.
  11. Vohringer-Kuhnt, T., Baumgarten, T. Karrer, K. and Briest, S., Wierwille's Method of Driver Drowsiness Evaluation Revisited, Proceeding of International Conference on Traffic & Transport Psychology, 2004.
  12. Wright, N. and McGown, A., Vigilance on the Civil Flight Deck: Incidence of Sleepiness and Sleep during Long-Haul Flights and Associated Changes in Physiological Parameters, Ergonomics, 44, 82-106, 2001. https://doi.org/10.1080/00140130150203893
  13. Yang, B., A Study of Vowel Formant Variation by Vocal Tract Modification, Journal of the Korean Society of Speech Sciences, 3, 83-92, 1998.
  14. Yang, B., Praat Homepage, http://fonetiks.info/praat/, (retrieved May 1, 2012).