On the potential for wearable technology in the modeling of vigilance and fatigue for aeronautic applications

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Pilots regularly perform safety-critical tasks that require a high level of alertness and executive control. Fatigueand its negative effects on performance has been widely recognized as posing a serious risk to aviation safety.Consequently, regulations around the world are being put into place to ensure that the airliners implementfatigue risk management systems. Scientists at Thales Research & Technology (TRT) Canada (Quebec) havebeen working on such a system that collects physiological and performance data using wearable technologies toassess fatigue related parameters. Developing this capability will open a new commercial market to Thales andenhance their existing product lines. To successfully commercialize this new capability Thales requires theassistance of a third party researcher to measure and assess the correlation of physiological parameters withfatigure-induced performance impacts. Consequently, they recruited Dr. Klein and his university-basedlaboratory to determine whether the system they are developing can measure fatigue and accurately anticipateits negative consequences for performance. Human participants recruited to the Klein lab will experimentinduced fatigue by long, continued performance on carefully selected cognitive tasks. Over each 8 hour sessionperformance on these tasks will be assessed, subjective reports of fatigue filled out, and measures of vigilancedecrement will be regularly collected, concurrently to the monitoring of physiological parameters. Workingwith the Thales team, Klein's team will develop a mathematical model that predicts fatigue levels andperformance decrements from the physiological parameters.