Toward the definition of a pilot’s physiological state vector through oculometry: a preliminary study in real flight conditions

Abstract

As long as the pilot is a key agent in charge of the flight, the definition of metrics able to predict his performance is a great challenge. Currently, online assessment of the aircrew performance relies on the aircraft state vector analysis. More recent approaches propose to refine this performance measurement by taking into account the pilots-aircraft interactions state vector (e.g. the pilot’s actions on his user interface) or the pilot’s physiological state vector. In this latter perspective, this preliminary study proposes to assess the benefits of using a standalone eye tracker in a light aircraft in real conditions. In spite of a sensitivity to light conditions and a definition of areas of interest limited to a part of the cockpit, the eye tracker has provided interesting behavioural (fixations) and physiological (pupillometry) measures in nominal (from take-off to landing) and degraded (provoke a simulated engine failure and plane down toward the airfield) conditions. The pilots spent less time glancing at the instruments, and focused less on instruments in the degraded condition. Moreover, the pupil size varied with the flight phases in the degraded condition, which reflected the variations of stress and attention levels. These encouraging results open promising perspective to online assess pilot performance through physiological vector.