Relationship between the technical skills and eye-movement indicators of pilots

This paper aims to find the relationship between flying technical skills and eye-movement indicators of pilots by researching the flying skills and eye-movement parameters in the initial training phase. The operation performance of pilots was considered as an indicator of the level of the pilots’ technical skills. The fixation count, the fixation duration, the saccade amplitude, the saccade angle, the saccade time and the average fixation time were all considered as the indicators of eye-movement. The data was recorded during the flight process when pilots operated the simulator according to the given mission. The data showed that there was a very strong correlation between the pilots’ performance level and the fixation count, the average fixation time and the saccade time. Besides, there must be a specific law of variation among them. The conclusion was similar to that of the existing expert-novice model about eye-movement research. The expert-novice model only described the phenomenon that there may exist some differences on eye-movement indicators among pilots with different levels of technical skills. However, in this paper, the relationship between the level of flying skills and eye-movement indicators was found. Based on this conclusion an evaluation criteria based on eye-movement indicators could be formed to assess the level of pilots’ technical skills objectively.