Cardiovascular parameters for mental workload detection of air traffic controllers

Abstract

In our study, we focused on air traffic controller’s working position for arrival management. Our aim was to evaluate cardiovascular parameters regarding their ability to distinguish between conditions with different traffic volumes and between conditions with and without the occurrence of an extraordinary event. Our sample consisted of 21 subjects. During an interactive simulation, we varied the load situations with two independent variables: the traffic volume and the occurrence of a priority-flight request. Dependent variables for registering mental workload were cardiovascular parameters, i.e., the heart rate, relative low-frequency and high-frequency band powers, and bandpower ratio of the low- and high-frequency bands. Heart rate was the only parameter able to differentiate significantly between simulations with minimal and high air-traffic volume, while the effect of the priority-flight request remained doubtful. No significant interaction between traffic volume and priority request could be identified for any of the cardiovascular parameters