The effect of flight phase on electrodermal activity and gaze behavior: A simulator study

Current advances in airplane cockpit design and layout are often driven by a need to improve the pilot's awareness of the aircraft's state. This involves an improvement in the flow of information from aircraft to pilot. However, providing the aircraft with information on the pilot's state remains an open challenge. This work takes a first step towards determining the pilot's state based on biosensor data. We conducted a simulator study to record participants' electrodermal activity and gaze behavior, indicating pilot state changes during three distinct flight phases in an instrument failure scenario. The results show a significant difference in these psychophysiological measures between a phase of regular flight, the incident phase, and a phase with an additional troubleshooting task after the failure. The differences in the observed measures suggest great potential for a pilot-aware cockpit that can provide assistance based on the sensed pilot state. •Unobtrusive technologies were used to record electrodermal activity and gaze behavior in an instrument failure scenario.•Participants' electrodermal activity increased significantly during high workload phases of the failure scenario.•AOI-based & non-AOI eye tracking metrics show significant differences when a secondary task needs to be solved during flight.•The observed measures show great potential for future cockpits that can provide assistance based on the sensed pilot state.