What the pilots see is what I get: how pilot’s gaze can increase the Human Performance Envelope to improve safety.

Abstract

Adaptive automation appears to be one of the next most challenging milestones in the field of aviation and air traffic management. This approach is aimed to be human centered (Billings, 1996) and has to be user-friendly in order to increase safety (Flightpath 2050). The detection of human operators’ performance inevitably has to be the first step in this activity (Maiwald & Schulte, 2011). Here the edges of acceptable behaviour have to be identified well in time, which means that points where human performance deteriorates have to be found. This has led to the notion of a Human Performance Envelope (Graziani et al., 2016). Within this context a reliable on-line recording and analysis of operational data is needed. In a second step, these data will then set the trigger and recommend when a redistributions of tasks has to take place and a higher level of automation has to take over. While new identification means like behavioral markers (Edwards, 2013, 2014) are under investigation, physiological parameters like ECG, EEG and eye-tracking are still prominent candidates thanks to new sensors and improved computational methods. These sources are critical in signalling performance degradation. The eye tracking data of this paper were gained in a flight simulator study with ten flight crews in the project “Human Performance Envelope” of the programme Future Sky Safety funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 initiative. Here physiological changes like gaze fixation and fast eye movements were measured. While eye-tracking data already proved to be a good indicator for Situation Awareness level 1 “perception” (Biella et al., 2005; Manske, 2015), this analysis will investigate how pilot’s gaze will be indicate Situation Awareness level 3 “projection”. A set of 22 areas of interest was defined in DLR’s A320 flight simulator AVES. Four of them match simulator’s outside view while the other ones are dedicated to instrument panels. The eye-tracking system continuously evaluates from the pupil measurements and the head position which area of interest the operator is looking at. In our study we will show if and how the pilot was paying well in advance attention to the relevant displays where he expects the next crucial information. For the recording of the eye movements the comfortable Eye Tracking Glasses of SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) were used. SMI’s eye tracking technology provides binocular tracking up to a 120 Hz sampling rate. Combined with a high definition scene camera and automatic parallax compensation this ensures accurate data over all distances. Data and visuals such as heat maps or Key Eye Tracking Metrics were the starting point for this analysis. The results of this study will show how to increase the envelope to improve both performance and safety. First indicators for a development of effective recovery measures through innovative Human Performance Envelope based solutions will be given as well. In addition to that, these results will be of additional benefit for flight instructors in pilot training. Implications for simulator training in terms of an improved instructor working position can be expected.