Study on comprehensive evaluation method of pilot mental workload

Diverse flight situations will have different influences on the function of a pilot's brain. To study these influences and confirm the sensitivity of related measurements, flight simulation tasks are carried out on an aircraft cockpit ergonomics evaluation experimental base. Subjects are required to monitor the changes of flight information and make corresponding flight operations simultaneously. Different quantities of abnormal information on the head-up display are handled so that pilot mental workload can be divided into four levels. Subjective assessment, behavior performance and physiological measurements are comprehensively applied to evaluate subjects' mental workload. Experiment results indicate that both subjective assessment based on NASA Task Load Index (TLX) and behavior performance can reflect the changes of pilot mental workload; heart rate variability, mean pupil diameter and eyelid opening indices are sensitive to mental workload in terms of physiological measurements. Combining all above measurements, a comprehensive evaluation method can provide a reasonable basis of pilot mental workload assessment and classification under complex flight tasks.