Improving Airline Pilots’ Visual Scanning and Manual Flight Performance through Training on Skilled Eye Gaze Strategies

Abstract

Poor cockpit monitoring has been identified as an important contributor to aviation accidents. Improving pilots’ monitoring strategies could therefore help to enhance flight safety. During two different sessions, we analyzed the flight performance and eye movements of professional airline pilots in a full-flight simulator. In a pre-training session, 20 pilots performed a manual approach scenario as pilot flying (PFs) and were classified into three groups according to their flight performance: unstabilized, standard, and most accurate. The unstabilized pilots either under- or over-focused various instruments. Their number of visual scanning patterns was lower than those of pilots who managed to stabilize their approach. The most accurate pilots showed a higher perceptual efficiency with shorter fixation times and more fixations on important primary flight instruments. Approximately 10 months later, fourteen pilots returned for a post-training session. They received a short training program and performed a similar manual approach as during the pre-training session. Seven of them, the experimental group, received individual feedback on their own performance and visual behavior (i.e., during the pre-training session) and a variety of data obtained from the most accurate pilots, including an eye-tracking video showing efficient visual scanning strategies from one of the most accurate pilots. The other seven, the control group, received general guidelines on cockpit monitoring. During the post-training session, the experimental group had better flight performance (compared to the control group), and its visual scanning strategies became more similar to those of the most accurate pilots. In summary, our results suggest that cockpit monitoring underlies manual flight performance and that it can be improved using a training program based mainly on exposure to eye movement examples from highly accurate pilots.

An investigation of feed-forward and feed-back eye movement training in immersive virtual reality

“…In this work, we built upon previous research that has trained perceptual cognitive skills -the ability to identify and environmental information, integrate it with existing knowledge and execute appropriate actions (Marteniuk, 1976) -using a method known as feed-forward eye movement training (Jarodzka et al, 2012(Jarodzka et al, , 2013Lefrançois et al, 2021;Miles et al, 2014;Moore et al, 2014;Nalanagula et al, 2006;Vine et al, 2014). Feed-forward eye movement training (FFEMT), also known as Eye Movement Modelling Examples (EMME) in some contexts, aims to teach the gaze strategies of expert performers to more novice trainees to accelerate their learning.…”

Detecting the Movement of the Pilot’s Body During Flight Operations

“…Most studies discuss pilots' eye gaze strategies, is lack of pilot's movement monitoring with optical tracking in the aircraft cockpit [8][9][10][11][12]. The aim of this research evaluate human-computer interaction and human factors engineering on multi-camera for pilot's cockpit measurement system.…”

Eye-Tracking

“…Many commercial aircraft are also equipped with head-up displays (HUD), further requiring pilots to adapt their scanning behavior (Goncalves Martins et al, 2020). Most of the critical flight information is gathered visually, hence the development of an effective instrument scan remains vital for safe and efficient pilot performance and an effective countermeasure against spatial disorientation (Ledegang & Groen, 2018; Lefrançois et al, 2021; Wickens et al, 2008).…”