Real-time evaluation method of flight mission load based on sensitivity analysis of physiological factors

As the complexity of flight missions continues to increase, sending a timely warning or providing assistance to pilots helps to reduce the probability of operational errors and flight accidents. Monitoring pilots’ physiological data, real-time evaluation of mission load is a feasible technical way to achieve this. In this paper, a set of flight tasks including aircraft control, human-computer interaction and mental arithmetic tests are designed to simulate five mission loads at different flight difficulty levels. A sensitivity analysis method based on a comprehensive test is proposed to select a set of sensitive physiological factors. Then, based on the SVM hierarchical combination classification method, the pilot mission load real-time evaluation model is established. The test results show significant differences in EMG, respiration rate (abdomen), heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, pupil area, fixation duration, number of fixations, and saccades. The high accuracy obtained from experiments proved that the proposed real-time evaluation model is applicable to meet the requirements of real working environments. The findings can provide methodological references for mission load evaluation research in other fields.