by Ray Oyung

October 21, 1999

Our group just completed the data collection phase of another study in a Boeing 747-400 simulator. For those of you who have been following along with me, this study is similar to the night time study that our group completed last year...and you know what that means. [alarm sounds] "Whoa, 4:00pm. Time to wake up and have some breakfast. I think I'll make a sandwich and grab some Cambell's Chunky Chicken Noodle soup for my lunch at midnight." (people tell me I think with my stomach but I don't think so ;-)

For those of you who are just tuning in, our program conducted a study with commercial airline pilots to determine if having five breaks during a long overnight flight would help keep pilots more alert than pilots having only one break. The answer seemed obvious enough and preliminary results showed that breaks do seem to help, but prior to our study, reports have only been noted on what pilots say they feel during these types of trips. We used electrode sensors (no I don't have a hunched-back helper named Egor), fill-in the answer type questions, reaction time tests, and other devices to determine if multiple breaks during a flight really help. For more background on this past study, you can review these articles from my journal, Alertness Measures Effectiveness Study, July 4, 1998 and Planning a Simulator Study, February 11, 1998.

	Now you see them...
Now you don't... This is what the actual flight deck looked like during one of our study trips with the pilots pictured above. This picture was taken just before take off. The picture above was taken in the same lighting with a flash.

Our study this year looked at how well an alertness monitoring device works with pilots on the flight deck. Wouldn't it be nice to have someone talk to you or remind you to do something when you were tired and might forget something you needed to do? We had the opportunity to find out if this type of device might help pilots while they were flying for long periods at night. The system is camera based, and a computer would watch the pilot and see if he/she is tired. If the computer thinks the pilot is tired, it will give the pilot an indication on a lighted panel or by voice command through the headset that pilots wear while flying. The device we used was in its early stages of being so we're not sure what to expect.

This is what the computer saw to determine the alertness level of the pilot. The lower left side of the screen just showed the pilot's eyes. How would you like to wear a costume that just showed your glowing eyes for Halloween!

Do you think something like this would help pilots? Stay tuned to find out...

Wow...10 days till Halloween! Have fun, but be safe and watch out for things that go "thump" in the night...boo! :-)