Patent ID: 8427326

Claim:
A method for detecting the physiological onset of fatigue of an operator, comprising: providing a plurality of like sensors on an operating handle to be gripped by the operator, wherein the sensors output a plurality of signals, each signal of the plurality of signals indicating a gripping force exerted by the operator; removing an offset from at least one signal of the plurality of signals by: collecting signal values over an update window into a collection; removing values from the collection which were collected prior to a value change exceeding a predetermined threshold; determining an offset threshold corresponding to a lowest quantile in a distribution of the values; taking the average of the values below the offset threshold as the offset; and subtracting the offset from the at least one signal; selecting at least two physiologically-significant signals from the plurality of signals; combining the at least two physiologically-significant signals to form a proxy grip signal; processing the proxy grip signal to detect a pattern indicative of the onset of operator fatigue; and generating an alert in response to detecting the pattern.