hi,
the most relevant work to your application in the literature is the US
marines (helicopter) study, I do not have the direct reference but most of
the data is available in:
The "handbook of perception and human performance" Vol. 1 (New York Wiley)
see the end for a refernece to a book that DOES have the full reference to
the US marines study I have lent my copy and so can not get it for you
myself just now.
he human performance handbook
is a wide ranging study of both the capabilities and behaviour of human
perception in complex environments from both a physical and psychological
perspective. I disagree with some of their figures from my own work but in
general as far as the study goes it is sound.
The problem you are dealing with is however non trivial!!!!! the change
observation sensitivity of a trained pilot is substantially greater than a
typical individual. Also note that my research shows that people do not
actually build the apparently representative models of their environments
that we "think" we do, rather we construct models that are highly tuned to
purpose, this means that the eye behaviour in a given dedicated environment
like flight deck which has specific and highly trained priorities the model
will be grossly distorted from reality, the eye scanning viewing and fxation
behaviour are consequently greatly altered from, for example, the
superficially similar problem of instrument monitoring in a power station or
similar where there is little ritualised training of scanning behaviour.
Pilots are taught scanning behaviours from pre instrument instruction
onwards and additionally learn substantially altered priorities of attention
than an untrained individual in the same environment with the same stimulus.
Perhaps the most outstanding difference you will note is the almost total
absence of a "home" gaze point in a trained pilot as compared with a tyro or
general population sample in the flight deck environment. (note my points
later however re simulators versus real) My work was done in real time of
course with our own eye tracker and your historical analysis will yield no
doubt greater accuracy also my work was weighted more to military pilots
than commercial and the sample was only 4. since the purpose of our study
was very specialised relating to the possibility of control enhancement from
eye control most of my data is not relevant to your study or indeed of
general interest except in so far as it relates to issues of attention. A
timeline analysis will be quite confusing to process because of the
aforementioned ritualised behaviours, these behaviours, such as the horizon/
instrument scan behaviour will greatly distort the timelines relevance if it
is used as a gauge of priority or attention. Also note that the A330 is a
fly by wire system and the pilot is forced out of his base training as he
has virtually none of the sensory feedback from the column he would get in a
conventional aircraft and has to fall back on the AH and climb rate
indicators for basic information of the aircraft condition. This is likely
to add a startle behaviour as it will fall outside of the basic trained
behaviour and will require a far greater attention duration during manoeuvre
than the same instruments would demand in a conventional aircraft. In some
cases perhaps by enough to achieve "home" status as a gazepoint. I suspect
that the airbus simulator is seriously flawed in this respect in that the
designed attitude acceleration simulators are inherently easier to sense
than true accelerations of a real airbus. I noted a significant startle
behaviour in a FBW aircraft data set that was absent from identical
manoeuvres in the simulator. While it is conceivable that there was some
actual unexpected aircraft behaviour interviews with the pilots increased my
conviction that external physical stimulus in the simulator is inadvertently
enhanced relative to the real acceleration stimuli that occurs in the
identical manoeuvre in the actual craft. There were definite near panic
saccade behaviours to the AH and CR instruments especially on level out from
steep turns or from climb rate changes that did not occur in the simulator.
I suspect that there is also some high frequency vibration coupling through
the simulator hydraulics which is detectable and serves to confirm a
manoeuvre duration subliminally to the pilot which is of course absent from
the real craft. You should note however that my study was not designed to
reveal these issues and was not aimed at such general issues of pilot
behaviour at all and so my data is patchy in this regard. I would however
strongly recommend a confirmation of the simulator data you have with at
least one of your subjects in a real aircraft in similar manoeuvres as with
respect to the specific issue you are researching the differential in non
optical sensory data may make a very substantial difference to the total man
machine interface issue you are examining.
Lastly of course the A330 has multifunction displays this has two
consequences, a relatively recently learned ritual behaviour sometimes (half
our sample) actually to the extent of a physical lean forward to confirm the
status of the display. At least one fatal accident occurred as a result of
misreading the status indicator from glide slope to feet per minute mode and
all 330 pilots are familiar and phobic of the risk despite modification of
the display indicator. The second consequence is the need for you in your
timeline analysis to pay particular attention to the display status as
clearly the priority changes as the display status changes and so a raw
positional eye track data will be grossly out of sync with the real priority
issues of the situation especially in the case of induced emergency
simulations.
In any case good luck with your work I will be interested to see the
results.
If you want to get hold of the US marine helicopter data you can get that
and many other useful references in the excellent
James EMeltzer and Kirk Moffit
"Head Mounted Displays , designing for the user" which although off topic
for you has vast bibliographies of eye research in real environments.
McGraw Hill
Scott
----- Original Message -----
From: "Geerd Anders" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 21 November 2000 12:14
Subject: Measurement of eye- and headmovements in a complex environment
Measurement of eye- and headmovements in complex simulator environments
(such as flight simulators or similar..)
Hello,
does anyone has experience or any recent reference to the above topic -
especially towards a data analysis on a timeline basis?
I'm currently working on my Ph.D thesis about the human-machine-interaction
in an Airbus A330 Full Flight Simulator. To study the pilot's behavior in
detail, I conducted experiments with professional airline pilots last year.
Nine complete crews flew 3 to 4 approach and landing scenarios each. During
the simulator flight, eye- and headmovements of the captain as pilot-flying
were recorded along with videos of the cockpit environment and numerous
simulation data. Now, 25 data sets (of 12-17 minutes flying time each) are
decoded, syncronized and ready to analyze.
Currently I am doing data analysis on a timeline basis. Since there is a
complex system to control and monitor, this is not a singular problem. The
pilot's monitoring behavior is certainly data driven for a few stimuli and
events, but most of the time, pilot's behavior is driven by multiple
concepts and strategies, which are processed in parallel. This has impact on
his monitoring and leads to superimposed threads.
Again, does anyone has experience or any recent reference to the above
topic?
What happened to the VINTHEC project? (I did not found further references
than the abandoned web page..)
I would be happy to exchange information and I am looking forward to get in
touch with YOU!
Geerd Anders
___________________________________________
Dipl.-Ing. Geerd Anders
Technische Universität Berlin,
Institut für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Sekr. F3
Marchstr. 12-14
10587 Berlin
Fon: +49 (030) 314-21325
Fax: +49 (030) 314-24459
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.fb12.tu-berlin.de/luftraum/luftverkehr/personen/anders.html
mailto:[log in to unmask]
http://www.geerdanders.de
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