Air Traffic Controller's Attention Allocation Based On Eye Movements

In the air traffic management system,air traffic controller is the manager of the sector who controls air traffic in the airspace.In air traffic control,the main responsibility of air traffic controller is to maintain a smooth and safe flow of air traffic through sending instructions and clearance to the pilots.Controllers make control decision based on information acquiring from monitoring radar screen and the communications.Therefore,the characteristics of their eye movements can reflect the allocation of attention and the perception of the environment.The physiological indicators of controllers can also reflect the distribution of the controller's attention to a certain extent.Therefore,eye movement behavior and physiological indicators can be used to study controller's attention allocation.This thesis presents the study of controller's attention allocation based on the analysis of controller's eye movements and physiological indicators.Experiments with different scenarios are set up and controllers are invited to participate in order to collect their eye movements and physiological data.Five factors that direct controller's attention are proposed.Then we examine the effects of the number of the aircraft and the speed of the aircraft on controller's attention allocation.It is found that there is high correlations between eye movements and physiological system by the use of Time Delay Stability algorithm.The number of the aircraft and the speed of the aircraft do have significant effects on controller's attention allocation.All physiological indicators except skin temperature exhibit multifractal characteristics.This thesis has advanced our understanding of controller's attention mechanism.