Neural Avionics

Objective:

The OPL has been working on a system to measure EEG, EKG, EMG, GSR, and respiration in flight and in the flight simulator. The goal is to develop avionics interfaces that adjust to measured pilot workload and stress.

Problem:

There are still situations that could cause accidents in avionics. These situations can lead to loss of positional awareness, spatial orientation, or control, or even to controlled flight into terrain.

Research Methods:

At OPL we have devised a system to measure various factors that play a role in determining pilot workload, situational awareness, and conflict onset. A few of the factors that will be measured are:

EEG, EKG, EMG

Facial Expressions

Facial Temperature

Pupillometry (Pupil Diameter)

Respiration Rate

Environment

Eye Tracking

Infrared thermal imaging can be used to measure facial expressions, facial temperature, pulse, and respiratory rate. Infrared imaging is possible because of the variation of blood flow through the body. An increase in blood flow can be measured because it will cause a change in temperature in the body. The change in temperature can then be used to determine stress levels in an individual.

Measuring brain activity can also determine workload of the pilot. OPL uses EEG to determine pilot stress and workload. To the right is an example of oscillations of the EEG Theta band.

Eye tracking is done to study flight deck ergonomics. Eye trackers that use infrared waves are used. Infrared waves are generated by an array of LEDs that flicker at a very high rate. The camera can then measure the amount of normal infrared waves and use the difference between the generated waves and the normal waves to record head position, orientation, and eye vectors.

The CAT Eye Toolset allows for heat maps to be generated from the eye tracking data. The software allows for the eye tracking data and video to be incorporated.

The information gathered from all of the factors should improve the design of aircraft flight decks and help determine solutions to the current problems in avionics

Sponsors and partners

NASA

projects:

Neural Avionics
Rotorcraft Brownout Study
Synthetic Flight Bag (SFB)

C-NRC

projects:

Neural Avionics