Pilot State Monitoring for Cursus Recommendation

Abstract

The training curriculum of air force cadets is currently identical for all, not taking trainees’ individual differences in skill acquisition into account. A model of physiological arousal conceptualized as “ease in flight” is proposed as an objective metric for individualization. Considering that a significant part of air force cadets training takes place on a flight simulator, the metrics used to provide cursus recommendation should be valid both in flight and in a simulator. This work concerns the validation of “ease in flight” as a metric for training individualization in a simulated task environment. Eight participants performed two consecutive flights on a low fidelity aircraft simulator, whilst wearing a chest strap to measure the electrical activity of the heart and respiratory activity. Results show that declared ease in flight and declared stress are strongly negatively correlated. In addition, measured ease in flight increased significantly from first to second flight. Together, these results suggest that the ease in flight model previously defined using data from experts in-flight generalizes to simulated flight, both from a perceived and objective point of view. Finally, the potential of the model for providing adaptive cursus recommendation through the individualized analysis of measured ease in flight across different required skills is discussed.