Eye Gaze Tracking for Military Aviation

Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. This paper investigated use of eye gaze trackers in military aviation environment as a direct controller of user interface as well as automatically estimate pilot’s cognitive load from ocular parameters. We have set up a flight simulator and used gaze controlled interface in three different configurations of displays (Head Down, Head Up and Head Mounted) for military fast jets. Our studies found that gaze controlled interface statistically significantly increase speed of interaction for secondary mission control tasks compared to touchscreen and joystick based Target Designation System. Finally, we tested gaze controlled system inside an aircraft both on ground and in different phases of flight in an Avro HL768 aircraft and military pilots could undertake representative pointing and selection tasks in less than 2 secs on average using gaze controlled interface.

In a parallel research, we used eye gaze trackers to automatically estimate pilot’s cognitive load from ocular parameters. We used a desktop flight simulator using Lear Jet Aircraft Model and longitudinal tracking task with constantly reducing two opposite boundaries for estimating cognitive load of pilots. Data were collected from 14 fast jet pilots. We also undertook three sorties with BAES Hawk and Jaguar aircrafts manoeuvring from -3G to +6G and undertaking air to ground dives. Our analysis found that ocular parameters in particular, rate of fixations statistically significantly correlate with pilots’ cognitive load estimated through their flying parameters.