Situation Awareness Adaptive Alerting in an Aircraft Cockpit: A Simulator Study

Abstract

The goal of this study was to develop an automated cockpit support system that is adaptive to the flight crew’s situation awareness (SA) estimated by online gaze analysis. Flight crew errors are often attributed to low SA. Online measurement of SA could be used to automatically guide the user’s attention for the sake of fewer errors and better performance. An eye-tracking based measure for SA was developed and used to trigger alerts in a flight simulator. In an experiment, ten certified pilots conducted two trials, with and without adaptive alerting. The experimental task involved tracking of flight parameters which were disturbed or changed at either random or previously known times. Our online estimation of SA showed a strong correlation with observed pilot performance. With adaptive alerts, the average performance increased in those experimental tasks, where the change of flight parameters could not be predicted by participants. Also, adaptive alerts reduced mean and variance of change detection duration. However, subjective ratings were mixed due to low transparency and false positives. SA-adaptive support can improve change detection performance in typical tasks on the flight deck. For a greater acceptance, pilots should be trained to understand the adaption policy.