Towards eye tracking as a support tool for pilot training and assessment

A key challenge in pilot training and performance assessment is the lack of insight into pilot visual behavior. Without this, it is difficult for an instructor to assess, e.g., whether pilots fail because they did not monitor the instruments or because they did not act on them, and whether pilots comply with monitoring aspects of the Standard Operating Procedures. Eye tracking provides the opportunity to measure where and how pilots look, thus offering an important window into pilot behavior that can address this challenge. An open question however is how to effectively present information about pilot gaze behavior to the instructor, such that it can be used to better guide trainees and improve performance and safety. In this paper, we review existing eye-tracking displays, set out a series of design principles for effective eye-tracking data visualization and propose example application areas for eye-tracking data visualization.