Abstract
Pilot fatigue is a critical reason for aviation accidents related to human errors. Human-related accidents might be reduced if the pilots’ eye movement measures can be leveraged to predict fatigue. Eye tracking can be a non-intrusive viable approach that does not require the pilots to pause their current task, and the device does not need to be in direct contact with the pilots. In this study, the positive or negative correlations among the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) measures (i.e., reaction times, number of false alarms, and number of lapses) and eye movement measures (i.e., pupil size, eye fixation number, eye fixation duration, visual entropy) were investigated. Then, fatigue predictive models were developed to predict fatigue using eye movement measures identified through forward and backward stepwise regressions. The proposed approach was implemented in a simulated short-haul multiphase flight mission involving novice and expert pilots. The results showed that the correlations among the measures were different based on expertise (i.e., novices vs. experts); thus, two predictive models were developed accordingly. In addition, the results from the regressions showed that either a single or a subset of the eye movement measures might be sufficient to predict fatigue. The results show the promise of using non-intrusive eye movements as an indicator for fatigue prediction and provides a foundation that can lead us closer to developing a near real-time warning system to prevent critical accidents.
Highlights
Fatigue is a critical reason for human-error-related aviation accidents [1,2]
All three psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) measures showed positive correlation with eye fixation duration and both the entropy measures, whereas they were negatively associated with eye fixation number and pupil size
The increase in fatigue was verified through the PVT measures of reaction time, number of lapses, and number of false starts, and the results accord with many previous research efforts in aviation [11,15,21,22,23,24,25,26]
Summary
Fatigue is a critical reason for human-error-related aviation accidents [1,2]. A recent review of major airline crashes reported that 48% of aviation crashes were attributed to pilot errors, and approximately 20% of these errors were associated with pilot fatigue [3,4]. Limited to short-haul flights, the survey results showed that the number of legs per day, flight duration, and time of day can be factors that increase fatigue [8,9,10]. The number of flight legs and duty length (time-on-task) were the most significant factors that increased pilot fatigue in short-haul flights, whereas the time of day had a weaker impact. The reduction in pilots’ prior sleep resulted in the increase in self-rated fatigue and decrease in mean response speed. An in-depth literature review based on the fatigue evaluation methods within the aviation and other relevant domains is provided below.
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