Analysis of Helicopter Pilots' Visual Behavior Changes across Traffic Pattern Phases using Eye Tracking

Helicopter accidents are still largely attributed to pilots' human error, and visual attention is critical to maintaining situation awareness. The gaze of 16 helicopter pilots was recorded with a head-mounted eye tracker during 75 actual traffic patterns, and dwell time on areas of interest, fixation duration, gaze entropy, outside–instrument transitions, and pupil response were compared across seven flight phases from takeoff to approach. All metrics changed significantly with the phase of flight: gaze stayed mostly on the outside view during takeoff, was distributed between the outside view and the instruments in the middle of the pattern, and converged on the landing point during approach, where instrument checking rarely occurred. Pilot qualification affected which instruments were checked rather than how much they were viewed. These findings suggest that gaze-based training and evaluation criteria should be defined for each phase.