13 March 2026

A week at Fontys in Eindhoven

From 9 to 13 March I was at Fontys for an Erasmus Blended Intensive Programme themed "How to stay human in a technology-driven world".

The challenge

The main assignment came from DAF Trucks, with two problems to choose from:

Women's safety on the road
Getting more people into truck driving

Tesla pitched a second option: finding the most efficient way to line up outgoing cars in the parking lot for transport pickup. Next to the DAF problems it felt thin, so my team passed.

Yoni, Simon and I went from Howest. Students from several European schools were mixed into teams for the week. The days followed a fixed rhythm: a workshop or inspiration session in the morning and afternoon, with group blocks in between to work on the assignment, and presentations on Friday.

Students seated in a hall for one of the sessions, seen from above — A session seen from the balcony, and the Strijp-S tour under the old Philips pipe bridges.

A tour group with headphones walking under old pipe bridges at Strijp-S — A session seen from the balcony, and the Strijp-S tour under the old Philips pipe bridges.

What we built: VitalRoute

We picked the driver shortage. Our starting point: drivers burn out. They sit for ten or more hours a day, many have chronic back pain, and the tracking in their cab is about efficiency, not about them. VitalRoute uses sensors in the truck to look after the driver instead.

Intelligent cabin. Pressure sensors in the seat map posture, a conductive steering wheel measures heart rate and grip, and cabin sensors track CO₂, temperature and vibration. No cameras.
Edge processing. A device in the truck builds a temporary model of the driver's physical state. Nothing goes to the cloud or the employer.
Recovery pod. At a VitalRoute stop, the truck hands a recovery prescription to a private lounge over NFC or MQTT. Massage, lighting, climate and guided stretches adapt to the strain from that drive.

Healthier drivers stay in the job longer. The pitch won the overall event.

The best session: EATC

I didn't know the European Air Transport Command existed before this week. It's a seven-nation alliance run from Eindhoven Air Base that pools about 170 aircraft under one command for air transport, mid-air refuelling and medical evacuation.

No money changes hands. Nations request flights through an in-house system and pay in a virtual currency: fly a mission for a partner and you earn credits, borrow an aircraft and you spend them.

EATC presenting on stage, seen from the audience — EATC on stage.

The rest of the week

A cybersecurity escape room
A tour of Strijp-S and Strijp-T, the former Philips factory grounds
An IoT workshop: ESP32 microcontrollers and a message broker, wired into a simulated intersection where traffic lights tell cars their colour
Sessions on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and European digital sovereignty
An Azure workshop, mostly familiar ground after System Architecture and Deployment at Howest

The escape room host watching teams on camera feeds in the control room — The cyber escape room: the control room and the briefing.

A team getting a briefing inside the green-lit escape room — The cyber escape room: the control room and the briefing.

The people

On the first evening every school brought a local delicacy. With four Belgian schools there, that meant a lot of chocolate. It was also the easiest place to meet people from the other schools.

Lunch plate with two pastas, salad and bread on a wooden table — Lunch at the venue.