MEASURING WORKLOAD AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS IN FIGHTER PILOTS

The next-generation Air Force is characterized by a shift towards information-heavy and networked operations, facilitated by advanced sensor and display technologies, increased automation, and datalink capabilities.

In the Defence research programme ‘V2306 Next Gen Aircrew Performance’, TNO and the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s Centre for Man and Aviation (RNLAF-CML) investigate the human factor aspects of these next-generation technologies and concepts of operation.

Recently, TNO conducted a simulator experiment with fourteen fighter pilots using the high-fidelity multiSIM F-16 flight simulator in Soesterberg, NL.

During missions of varying complexity, both workload and situational awareness were measured using a monitoring suite with physiological sensors, including EEG (brain activity), ECG (heart rate), skin conductance (stress level), and eye tracking (visual attention) as well as behavioral responses to events in a simulated flight. The relation with next-generation operations was achieved by varying the datalink functionality between missions.

The collected data will be used to validate a predictive model on cognitive performance, which can be used to evaluate the impact of new technologies and concepts of operation on the pilot’s workload.

This work is part of the AEOLUS ecosystem, a collaboration between RNLAF-CML, TNO and aviation industry, located at the Human Tech Campus in Soesterberg, NL. AEOLUS is a joint innovation center on human performance under extreme conditions in military aerospace. See https://aeolus-hpi.org/ for more information.

#TNO, #RNLAF, #CML, #Aeolus, #Human Factors, #flight simulation, #workload, #SA, #operator state monitoring, #aerospace, #aircrew