Abstract
An increasing level of automation in the flight cockpit more and more prevents pilots from receiving direct feedback from the aircraft. This lack may result in deficient situation awareness, which can degrade the dependability of the pilot-aircraft system substantially. To assist the pilot in maintaining a high level of situation awareness, adaptive situation assessment systems based on monitoring the pilot’s gaze behavior may represent a means for future development. However, the measurement details need to be specified, and, much more important, the individual characteristics of pilot gaze change require exploration. For a highly automated environment, the impact of the aircraft’s states and the communication with the air traffic control on the gaze behavior were investigated, but the study’s conclusions are based on one professional pilot, only, which impedes generalization. Therefore, this paper aims (a) at replicating the effects of the aircraft’s states and communication efforts on pilots’ gaze behavior and (b) at analyzing whether there are inter-individual differences in the gaze patterns of pilots. For this purpose, the data of a study with twelve professional pilots were used for exploration. During the trial flights two scenarios were flown while the states of the aircraft, the communication with the air traffic control, and the pilot’s gaze behavior were recorded. Data analytic procedure revealed significant interindividual differences. In addition, the results replicated the findings of the one-participant study: Especially the altitude of the aircraft and the special format of the communication impact the pilots’ visual attention.
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