The Investigation of Pilots' Eye Scan Patterns on the Flight Deck during an Air-to-Surface Task

Twenty qualified mission-ready F-16 pilots participated in this research. The ages of participants are between 26 and 46 years old (M=33, SD=6); total flying hours between 400 and 3,250 hours (M=1358, SD=882); F-16 type flying hours between 101 and 2,270 hours (M=934, SD=689). Eye movement data were collected by a head-mounted ASL (Applied Science Laboratory) Mobile Eye which was 76 grams in weight, combined with F-16 flight simulator, a dynamic high fidelity trainer that replicates actual aircraft performance, navigation and weapon systems. The scenario is an air-to-surface task. Participants have to intercept the proper route and turn toward the target at an altitude of 500 feet with speed of 500-KIAS, then performing a steep pop-up manoeuver to increase altitude abruptly for appropriate reconnaissance, following by dive and roll-in toward the target to avoid hostile radar lock-on. When approaching the target, subjects have to roll-out, level the aircraft, aiming at the target, release the weapon, and finally pull-up with a 5 similar to 5.5 G-force to breakaway from the range. The results show significant differences in pilots' number of gaze points among five different AOIs, F (4, 95) =533.84, p<.001, eta 2 rho = .97. Further comparisons using post-hoc Bonferroni adjusted tests showed HUD has a significantly higher numbers of gaze points than ICP, DED, RMFD and LMFD; and ICP has significantly higher gaze points than DED, RMFD and LMFD. Also, there were significant differences in pilots' number of fixation among five different AOIs, F (4, 95) =306.98, p<.001, eta 2 rho = .94. Further comparisons using post-hoc Bonferroni adjusted tests showed HUD has significantly higher number of fixation than ICP, DED, RMFD and LMFD; and ICP has significantly higher number of fixations than DED, RMFD and LMFD. Pilots have to be able to 'see and process' the information to understand the situation, and then, to 'project' the situation in the near future. There is a long-standing argument concerning bottom-up or top-down visual processes in the eye movement literature. It is observed in this research that pilots applied both bottom- up and top-down visual processes, depending on the salience of information or previous experience.