A Comparison of Helicopter Pilots' Gaze Movements during Hover Flight in a Real Helicopter and a Full Flight Simulator

Abstract

Many accidents and serious incidents in commercial air transport helicopters occur during low-altitude operations, take-off and landing manoeuvrer because of inadequate obstacle clearance and are related to human factors; especially the pilots’ situational awareness. Enabling pilots to better assess their situational awareness can make an important contribution to reducing the risk of fatal accidents. One approach is to investigate the human-machine interaction by recording the pilot’s gaze behaviour with the help of eye tracking. Most of the known literature only deals with simulator studies. To date, the applicability of the results to real helicopter flights has not been investigated. This paper reports the results of eye tracking measurement during real flight and simulator studies of a hover flight at different altitudes. It was shown that the pilots’ fixations are reduced to a smaller area in the simulator. Further metrics also showed differences between the simulator study and real flight. Real-world applicability of gaze data obtained in the simulator is only possible within narrow limits.