The project SENSATION (Adavanced SENsor Development for ATtentION, Stress, Vigilance & Sleep / Wakefulness Monitoring), was started in January 2004, aiming to develop non-obtrusive systems for sleep, stress and fatigue monitoring/forecasting, enabling the status of operators of critical processes to be assessed in real time and operator alarm promptly generated to avoid accidents. The project ends in December 2008.

Excessive fatigue, sleep loss, stress and inattention constitute the social diseases of our century, which can lead to serious accidents and even catastrophes, if the drivers, pilots, operators of nuclear power plants, air traffic controllers, etc. are involved. To combat these problems and reduce the risk of accidents, the project SENSATION aims not only to develop a series of micro and nano sensors, but also to develop and validate new algorithms, innovative systems for monitoring, detection and prediction of physiological states associated with fatigue, hypovigilance or stress. The Portuguese members of the SENSATION Consortium, Tecmic and INOV, have been actively participating in the Project since the beginning.

The role of Tecmic in this project is the integration of a unit for the detection of sleep and stress on workers in industrial environments, based on new sensors and algorithms developed by the project partners, which are experts in the area. This unit will be used in the demonstrators to be developed.

INOV participates in the development of supporting network data and is responsible for coordinating the development of WAN (Wide Area Network). INOV also takes part in the development of the demonstrator for monitoring of air traffic controllers, a key component for evaluation and validation of the Project results.