Embedded eye tracker in a real aircraft: new perspectives on pilot/aircraft interaction monitoring

Abstract

Currently, online assessment of the aircrew performance focuses on behavioural data (flight data and pilot’s actions) and the detection may intervene too late for coping with the situation degradation. An early assessment of the pilot’s "internal state", based on physiological data collected from his autonomous nervous system (ANS) and predictive of his behaviour, is necessary. These data give clues both on the cognitive activity and on the emotional states and stress. The integration of ANS devices in a cockpit presents practical drawbacks and their use is often limited to simulators. In this preliminay study, the pros and cons of the adaptation of a standalone eye tracker in a light aircraft are presented. 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 on less 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 two tracks: the development of new eye trackers able to overcome current technical limitations, and neuroergonomics researches providing guidelines for new man-machine interfaces integrating both flight and crew state vectors.