Browsing by Author "Wang, Yifan"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Comparative analysis of touchscreen inceptors and traditional sidesticks on flight decks: flight performance, visual behaviours and situation awareness
    (Taylor and Francis, 2025-02-12) Wang, Yifan; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Blundell, James; Li, Wen-Chin
    The concept of touchscreen primary control device is a novel approach of touchcreen implentation. The objective of this study is to investigate differences in flight performance and attention allocation between a touchscreen inceptor and a traditional sidestick. Twenty-one participants flew four simulated instrument landing system (ILS) approaches - with the touchscreen inceptor or traditional sidestick - during flight scenarios where an aircraft attitude disturbance was either present or absent. Results demonstrated that participant performance scores were worse with the touchscreen inceptor compared to the sidestick during attitude disturbance scenarios. Interestingly, participants exhibited reduced attention to external visual cues with the touchscreen inceptor compared to the sidestick. In addition, use of the touchscreen inceptor resulted in lower performance and lower self-reported situation awareness. Overall, the touchscreen inceptor demonstrated poorer performance compared to the traditional sidestick, highlighting limitations in its current design that warrant cautious consideration and further investigation.
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    The evaluations of the impact of the pilot’s visual behaviours on the landing performance by using eye tracking technology
    (Springer, 2023-07-09) Wang, Yifan; Yang, Lichao; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Zhao, Yifan; Li, Wen-Chin
    Introduction. Eye tracking technology can be used to characterise a pilot's visual behaviour as well as to further analyse the workload and status of the pilot, which is crucial for tracking and predicting pilot performance and enhancing flight safety. Research questions. This research aims to investigate and identify the visual-related factors that could affect the pilot's landing operation performance (depending on whether the landing was successful or not). Method. There are 23 participants who performed the task of landing in the Future system simulator (FSS) while wearing eye trackers. Their eye tracking parameters including proportion of fixation count on primary flight display (PFC on PFD), proportion of fixation count on out the window (PFC on OTW), percentage change in pupil diameter (PCPD) and blink count were trained for classification using XGBoost according to whether they landed successfully or not. Results & Discussion. The results demonstrated that eye-movement features can be used to classify and predict a pilot's landing performance with an accuracy of 77.02%. PCPD and PFC on PFD are more crucial for performance classification out of the four features. Conclusion. It is practical to classify and predict pilot performance using eye-tracking technologies. The high importance of PCPD and PFC on PFD indicates that there is a correlation between pilots’ workload and attention distribution and performance, which has important implications for future predictive and analytical research on performance. The prediction of performance using eye tracking suggests that pilot status monitoring has a useful application in flight deck design.
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    Future flight deck design: developing an innovative touchscreen inceptor combined with the primary flight display
    (Elsevier, 2024-04-27) Wang, Yifan; Li, Wen-Chin; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Braithwaite, Graham
    The touchscreen has the potential to optimize the space usage and efficiency of the flight deck. Currently, touchscreens can combine the input and output functions of different systems. However, it does not yet serve as an inceptor to replace the sidestick or control column for aircraft manoeuvres. This study aims to examine the potential of a touchscreen as a flight inceptor compared with a traditional sidestick and gamepad. This research recruited 72 participants who interacted with three inceptors for both an instrument landing with disturbance and without disturbance using the Future System Simulator. The findings demonstrated that pilot performance, system usability and pilots’ situation awareness of touchscreen inceptors were significantly inferior to those of traditional sidesticks and gamepads. Compared to the sidestick and gamepad, the touchscreen provided a poorer situation awareness with the highest supply and demand. In addition, the performance of all inceptors was significantly influenced by disturbance. There is still a long way to go for certification of a touchscreen as an inceptor on the future flight deck. This research showed that even though the touchscreen inceptor scored the lowest on both SUS and SART, the majority of pilots agreed that the touchscreen inceptor provided a better attentional supply in challenging disturbance circumstances, providing proof of concept for its possible inclusion in flight deck design. There is a potential that the emerging touchscreen as an inceptor may develop further along with human-system integration flight deck design.
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    Future flight safety monitoring: comparison of different computational methods for predicting pilot performance under time series during descent by flight data and eye-tracking data
    (Springer, 2024-06-01) Wang, Yifan; Li, Wen-Chin; Nichanian, Arthur; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Chan, Wesley Tsz-Kin
    Introduction. Effective and real-time analysis of pilot performance is important for improving flight safety and enabling remote flight safety control. The use of flight data and pilot physiological data to analyse and predict pilot performance is an effective means of achieving this monitoring. Research question. This research aims to compare two forecasting methods (XGBoost and Transformer) in evaluating and predicting pilot performance using flight data and eye tracking data. Method. Twenty participants were invited to fly an approach using Instrument Landing System (ILS) guidance in the Future Systems Simulator (FSS) while wearing Pupil-Lab eye tracker. The deviation to the desired route, the pupil diameter and the gaze positions were selected for forecasting the flight performance indicator: the difference between the aircraft altitude and the reference altitude corresponding to the ideal 3-degree glide path. Utilize XGBoost and the Transformer forecasting technique to develop a forecasting model using the data from this research, and conduct a comparative analysis of the accuracy and convenience of both models. Results & Discussion. The result demonstrates that using XGBoost regression model had a higher prediction accuracy, (RMSEXGBoots = 42.29, RMSETransformer = 102.10) and its easier to achieve a high prediction accuracy than Transformer as Transformer forecasting method placed a high demand on debugging model and computing equipment. The deviation to desired route and the pupil diameter were more important in the XGBoost model. Conclusion. The use of machine learning and deep learning methods enables the monitoring and prediction of flight performance using flight data and pilot physiological data. The comparison of the two methods shows that it is not necessarily the newer and more complex technology that can build more accurate and faster prediction models, but building the right model based on the data is important for real-time flight data monitoring and prediction in the future.
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    Self-organising maps for comparing flying performance using different inceptors
    (Springer, 2024-06-01) Nichanian, Arthur; Li, Wen-Chin; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Wang, Yifan; Chan, Wesley Tsz-Kin
    This paper addresses a new data analysis method which is suitable to cluster flight data and complement current exceedance-based flight data monitoring programmes within an airline. The data used for this study consists of 296 simulated approaches from 4.5 NM to 1 NM to the runway threshold, flown by 74 participants (both pilots and non-pilots) with either a conventional sidestick or a gamepad in the future flight simulator at Cranfield University. It was clustered and analysed with the use of Kohonen’s Self-Organising Maps (SOM) algorithm. The results demonstrate that SOM can be a meaningful indicator for safety analysts to accurately cluster both optimal and less-optimal flying performance. This methodology can therefore complement current deviation-based flight data analyses by highlighting day-to-day as well as exceptionally good performance, bridging the cap of current analyses with safety-II principles.
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    To be or not to be? Assessment on using touchscreen as inceptor in flight operation
    (Elsevier, 2022-12-09) Li, Wen-Chin; Wang, Yifan; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz
    Introduction. The innovative concept on applying touchscreen controls on the flight deck design had been discussed for a long time. However, there are some potential risks on touchscreen applications constrained by the issues associated with turbulence and pilots’ inadvertent activation. Research questions. This research aims to evaluate human-computer interactions and handling quality using touchscreens as inceptor in flight operations. Method. The scenario was set to conduct an instrument landing on the final approach using Future System Simulator (FSS). There are 8 commercial pilots (flight hours M = 4475.0, SD = 2742.1) using three different inceptors including traditional sidestick, touchscreen and gamepad for ILS landing. Results. There was a significant difference among three inceptors on handling quality in both landing without turbulence (F (2,14) = 6.25, p =.01, ηp2 = .47) and landing with turbulence (F (2,14) = 3.93, p =.04, ηp2 = .36) scenarios. Furthermore, post Hoc comparisons revealed that the handling quality of touchscreen was significantly lower than sidestick and gamepad. Discussion. By analyzing participants’ empirical experiences, the touchscreen inceptor was rated as the lowest handling quality among three inceptors due to the novel and lack of practice effects in flight operations. However, there is a potential on the information supply for touchscreen inceptor based on pilots’ feedbacks. Conclusion. Touchscreens provide numerous benefits for making flight decks simpler, but the usage as an inceptor is still in its infancy and there are still lots of problems that need to be fixed. Future Systems Simulator (FSS) is a highly reconfigurable modular flight simulator that allows pilots/researchers to explore the potential on future flight decks design for single pilot operations. There are some potential benefits on the implementation touchscreen inceptor for future flight deck design if the human-centred design principle can be integrated in the early stage.
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    Touchscreen Inspector in Future Flight Deck Design
    (Cranfield University, 2023-01-17 09:16) Li, Wen-Chin; Wang, Yifan; Korek, Wojciech Tomasz; Braithwaite, Graham
    Fifty-one participants were invited to conduct two scenarios which consisted of landing with disturbance (LD) and landing no disturbance (LN) using three inceptors, including sidestick, gamepad and touchscreen on the FSS. Both the system usability scale (SUS) and situation awareness rating technique (SART-10D) were completed by participants at the end of each trial. Therefore, two-way repeated measure ANOVA was applied to analyse participants€™ ratings on SUS for system usability involving two sub-dimensions: usability (SUS-U) and learnability (SUS-L), and SART-10D for situation awareness including three sub-dimensions: demand (SART-D), supply (SART-S) and understanding (SART-U) while interacting with a touchscreen as inceptor for flight control. The inceptors and scenarios are two independent variables, both SUS and SART, and their sub-dimensions were dependent variables.