Investigating the relationship between eye movements and the situation awareness of forklift operators for accident prevention

Abstract

This study investigated differences in eye movement indicators among forklift operators with different situation awareness (SA) and the relationship between eye movement indicators and the SA of forklift operators to verify the effectiveness of eye movement tracking in assessing SA and the factors affecting operators’ SA for improving forklift operation safety. An eye movement tracking system was used to collect eye movement data from 15 forklift operators while they performed a series of forklift tasks. The SA global assessment technique (SAGAT) was used to determine the SA score of each operator. The results indicated that the fixation duration percentage (FDP), fixation count percentage (FCP) and average fixation duration (AFD) all had a positive relationship with SA in the work-related area of interest (AOI). These findings support eye movement tracking as an effective technique to quantitatively evaluate forklift operators’ SA and provide insights into how forklift operators’ SA could be improved.