Abstract
Comprehensive multimodal psychophysiological measurements and smart data analysis based on wearable and low-cost technologies could enhance traditional air traffic controller (ATC) selection process. Many recent studies in neuro-cognitive science and stress resilience illustrated effectiveness of these multimodal measurements and appropriate metrics in comprehensive assessment of ATCs' mental states, such as cognitive workload, cognitive decline, attention deficit, fatigue, emotional and behavioural problems, etc. Accordingly, this article is focused on innovation efforts in ATC selection protocols based on a set of comprehensive stimuli and corresponding multimodal psychophysiological measurements. The concept of enhancement of ATC selection process presented in this article includes complex physiological, oculometric and speech measurements and appropriate metrics. From these multimodal measurements during specific stimulation tasks, which include different versions of acoustic startle stimuli, airblasts, semantically relevant aversive images and sounds, different versions of Stroop tests, visual tracking test, a complex set of multimodal-multidimensional features is computed as predictors of ATC candidates' future performance, like: stress resilience, workload capacity, attention, visual performance, working memory etc. Such cost-effective, more objective, non-invasive preliminary measurements, lasting no longer than 45 minutes may have good discriminative power and might be used in ATC selection processes as enhancement of current selection procedures. Comprehensive analysis of presented multimodal features during different experimental conditions might also be very useful in selection processes of other stressful professional jobs, like first responders, pilots, astronauts etc.
Highlights
During their operational duties, air traffic controllers (ATCs) must be capable to perform multiple stressful tasks simultaneously, must have good situational awareness which enables early perception and prediction of potential aircraft collisions with tragic consequences, must make right decisions under such conditions in a split of second and solve toughThe associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Vincenzo Piuri .problems in stressful situations
High performance of ATC candidates requires extraordinary cognitive and emotional human potential, which might be assessed by proposed clusters of different multimodal features presented in this article
We selected a set of 3 × 3 multimodal physiological, oculometric and speech features as tools and means for ATC candidates’ performance evaluation and selection
Summary
It means that ATC professionals should be selected among candidates who are able to stay calm under the complex cognitive stress and make right decisions while processing different types of sensory information. The core of our concept of multimodal psychophysiological measurements in ATC selection is search for individuals who are capable to retain high cognitive capacities and emotional stability during high arousal emotional excitation within stressful working environment. These abilities need to be assessed during their selection and training process to get individuals who are capable to cope with all aspects of their future professional job. Their rigorous selection process and training enable them to handle all the problems which they may face, and they are always supported by their colleagues who are ready to help them
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