Combining a virtual reality flight simulator and a multimodal human performance data capture system to measure airmanship abilities in RAF pilots.

Airmanship is a very broad term used to describe “the non-technical skills required to operate an aircraft safely from planning to debriefâ€. Two Airmanship skills, widely recognised by instructors as being crucial for competent flying, are situation awareness and lookout. While Situation Awareness (SA) is defined as the general perception of “the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status into the near future†(Endsley, 1995, p.36), ‘lookout’ is more specific to the pilot’s scanning behaviours and ability to identify other aircraft and potential threats. Although flight simulator software, such as Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D® simulation software (P3D), is now routinely used to train pilots to improve situation awareness and lookout, there is currently no means of objectively measuring and assessing performance. The aim of this project is to test a new, multimodal human performance data capture platform that could be used to measure situation awareness and look-out abilities in pilots.