scholarly journals Visual scanning strategies in the cockpit are modulated by pilots’ expertise: A flight simulator study

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. e0247061
Author(s):  
Christophe Lounis ◽  
Vsevolod Peysakhovich ◽  
Mickaël Causse
Keyword(s):  
Situation Awareness ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Flight Simulator ◽  
Transition Matrices ◽  
Visual Scanning ◽  
K Nearest Neighbors ◽  
Commercial Aviation ◽  
Scanning Strategies

During a flight, pilots must rigorously monitor their flight instruments since it is one of the critical activities that contribute to update their situation awareness. The monitoring is cognitively demanding, but is necessary for timely intervention in the event of a parameter deviation. Many studies have shown that a large part of commercial aviation accidents involved poor cockpit monitoring from the crew. Research in eye-tracking has developed numerous metrics to examine visual strategies in fields such as art viewing, sports, chess, reading, aviation, and space. In this article, we propose to use both basic and advanced eye metrics to study visual information acquisition, gaze dispersion, and gaze patterning among novices and pilots. The experiment involved a group of sixteen certified professional pilots and a group of sixteen novice during a manual landing task scenario performed in a flight simulator. The two groups landed three times with different levels of difficulty (manipulated via a double task paradigm). Compared to novices, professional pilots had a higher perceptual efficiency (more numerous and shorter dwells), a better distribution of attention, an ambient mode of visual attention, and more complex and elaborate visual scanning patterns. We classified pilot’s profiles (novices—experts) by machine learning based on Cosine KNN (K-Nearest Neighbors) using transition matrices. Several eye metrics were also sensitive to the landing difficulty. Our results can benefit the aviation domain by helping to assess the monitoring performance of the crews, improve initial and recurrent training and ultimately reduce incidents, and accidents due to human error.

An Alternative Method for Identifying a Failed Engine in Twin-Engine Propeller Aircraft

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Andrey K. Babin ◽  
Andrew R. Dattel ◽  
Margaret F. Klemm
Keyword(s):  
Human Error ◽  
Flight Simulator ◽  
Traditional Group ◽  
Aircraft Accidents ◽  
Alternative Method ◽  
Indicator Group ◽  
Group A ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Engine Failure ◽  
And Performance

Abstract. Twin-engine propeller aircraft accidents occur due to mechanical reasons as well as human error, such as misidentifying a failed engine. This paper proposes a visual indicator as an alternative method to the dead leg–dead engine procedure to identify a failed engine. In total, 50 pilots without a multi-engine rating were randomly assigned to a traditional (dead leg–dead engine) or an alternative (visual indicator) group. Participants performed three takeoffs in a flight simulator with a simulated engine failure after rotation. Participants in the alternative group identified the failed engine faster than the traditional group. A visual indicator may improve pilot accuracy and performance during engine-out emergencies and is recommended as a possible alternative for twin-engine propeller aircraft.

scholarly journals Effects of Visual Complexity Levels and Information Decluttering Methods for Cockpit Displays on Human Search Performance

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-100
Author(s):  
Sung Ho Kim ◽  
Ji Hwan Lee ◽  
Donggun Park ◽  
Yushin Lee ◽  
Myung Hwan Yun
Keyword(s):  
Situation Awareness ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Visual Complexity ◽  
Search Time ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Search Performance ◽  
Design Variables ◽  
Cockpit Displays ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Speed And Accuracy

Clutter problem of modern cockpit displays can occur frequently due to a large amount of information. So, decluttering less important information is required to minimize search time to find target information and prevent human error in interpreting display information. This study is to compare human search performance by visual complexity levels and decluttering methods of cockpit displays. Visual complexity of cockpit displays was designed to be three levels (High, medium, and low) by combining four design variables (number of stimuli, number of colors, number of icons, and variance of divisions) affecting visual complexity. A threat scoring equation was developed to determine what information to be decluttered and four decluttering methods (removal, dimming, dotting, and small sizing) were used to figure out how to declutter the information effectively. Human search performance was measured through search time of visual search task in terms of speed and number of hits of signal detection task in terms of accuracy. The main effect of visual complexity levels and the interaction effect were not significant in both search time and number of hits. Meanwhile, the main effect of decluttering methods was significant in search time. Especially, dotting was the most effective decluttering method in terms of speed and accuracy of human perception performance. The results of this study can be applied to information processing of cockpit displays and then contribute to improve pilot situation awareness.

Dynamic Resource Allocation for Compressive-Sensing-Based Wireless Visual Sensor Networks with Energy Harvesting

2013 ◽  
Vol 303-306 ◽  
pp. 187-190
Author(s):  
Lei You ◽  
Xin Su ◽  
Yu Tong Han
Keyword(s):  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Compressive Sensing ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Sensor Nodes ◽  
Visual Sensor ◽  
Visual Sensor Network ◽  
Available Bandwidth ◽  
Potential Applications

Wireless visual sensor network (WVSN) is emerging with many potential applications. The lifetime of a WVSN is seriously dependent on the energy shored in the battery of its sensor nodes as well as the adopted compression and resource allocation scheme. In this paper, we use the energy harvesting to provide almost perpetual operation of the networks and compressed-sensing-based encoding to decrease the power consumption of acquiring visual information at the front-end sensors. We propose a dynamic algorithm to jointly allocate power for both compressive-sensing-based visual information acquisition and data transmission, as well as the available bandwidth under energy harvesting and stability constraints. A virtual energy queue is introduced to control the resource allocation and the measurement rate in each time slot. The algorithm can guarantee the stability of the visual data queues in all sensors and achieve near-optimal performance.

scholarly journals Transfer Entropy Based Causality From Head Motion To Eye Movement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zezhong Lv ◽  
Qing Xu ◽  
Klaus Schoeffmann ◽  
Simon Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Eye Movement ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Transfer Entropy ◽  
Movement Behavior ◽  
Head Motion ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Sensorimotor Activity ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Psychophysical Studies

AbstractEye movement behavior, which provides the visual information acquisition and processing, plays an important role in performing sensorimotor tasks, such as driving, by human beings in everyday life. In the procedure of performing sensorimotor tasks, eye movement is contributed through a specific coordination of head and eye in gaze changes, with head motions preceding eye movements. Notably we believe that this coordination in essence indicates a kind of causality. In this paper, we investigate transfer entropy to set up a quantity for measuring an unidirectional causality from head motion to eye movement. A normalized version of the proposed measure, demonstrated by virtual reality based psychophysical studies, behaves very well as a proxy of driving performance, suggesting that quantitative exploitation of coordination of head and eye may be an effective behaviometric of sensorimotor activity.

scholarly journals How User-Centered Design Supports Situation Awareness for Complex Interfaces

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-35
Author(s):  
Jacob D. Oury ◽  
Frank E. Ritter
Keyword(s):  
Situation Awareness ◽  
Traffic Control ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Detection System ◽  
Error Rates ◽  
User Centered Design ◽  
Design Philosophy ◽  
System States ◽  
Machine Systems ◽  
User Centered

AbstractThis chapter moves the discussion of how to design an operation center down a level towards implementation. We present user-centered design (UCD) as a distinct design philosophy to replace user experience (UX) when designing systems like the Water Detection System (WDS). Just like any other component (e.g., electrical system, communications networks), the operator has safe operating conditions, expected error rates, and predictable performance, albeit with a more variable range for the associated metrics. However, analyzing the operator’s capabilities, like any other component in a large system, helps developers create reliable, effective systems that mitigate risks of system failure due to human error in integrated human–machine systems (e.g., air traffic control). With UCD as a design philosophy, we argue that situation awareness (SA) is an effective framework for developing successful UCD systems. SA is an established framework that describes operator performance via their ability to create and maintain a mental model of the information necessary to achieve their task. SA describes performance as a function of the operator’s ability to perceive useful information, comprehend its significance, and predict future system states. Alongside detailed explanations of UCD and SA, this chapter presents further guidance and examples demonstrating how to implement these concepts in real systems.

Apply Performance Evaluation Matrix on Investigating Human Error Events in the Main Control Room

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tzu-Chung Yenn ◽  
Yung-Tsan Jou ◽  
Chiuhsiang Joe Lin ◽  
Wan-Shan Tsai ◽  
Tsung-Ling Hsieh
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Situation Awareness ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Human Error ◽  
Human Performance ◽  
Main Stream ◽  
Control Room ◽  
Human Errors ◽  
Wrong Decision ◽  
Evaluation Matrix

Digitalized nuclear instruments and control systems have become the main stream design for the main control room (MCR) of advanced nuclear power plants (NPPs) nowadays. Digital human-system interface (HSI) could improve human performance and, on the other hand, could reduce operators’ situation awareness as well. It might cause humans making wrong decision during an emergency unintentionally. Besides, digital HSI relies on computers to integrate system information automatically instead of human operation. It has changed the operator’s role from mainly relating operational activity to mainly relating monitoring. However, if operators omit or misjudge the information on the video display units or wide display panel, the error of omission and error of commission may occur. Therefore, how to avoid and prevent human errors has become a very imperative and important issue in the nuclear safety field. This study applies Performance Evaluation Matrix to explore the potential human errors problems of the MCR. The results show that the potential problems which would probably affect to the human performance of the MCR in advanced NPPs are multiple accidents, pressure level, number of operators, and other factors such as working environmental.

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