Recent progress in the development of mobile Eye Tracking (ET) systems shows that there is a demand for modern flexible solutions that would allow for dynamic tracking of objects in the video stream. The paper describes a newly developed tool for work with ET glasses, and its advantages are outlined with the example of a pilot study. A flight task is performed on the FNTP II MCC simulator, and the pilots are equipped with the Mobile Tobii Glasses. The proposed Smart Trainer tool performs dynamic object tracking in a registered video stream, allowing for an interactive definition of Area of Interest (AOI) with blurred contours for the individual cockpit instruments and for the construction of corresponding histograms of pilot attention. The studies are carried out on a group of experienced pilots with a professional pilot CPL(A) license with instrumental flight (Instrument Rating (IR)) certification and a group of pilots without instrumental training. The experimental section shows the differences in the perception of the flight process between two distinct groups of pilots with varying levels in flight training for the ATPL(A) line pilot license. The proposed Smart Trainer tool might be exploited in order to assess and improve the process of training operators of advanced systems with human machine interfaces.
Present-day technologies used in SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) systems in many implementations are based on wireless sensor networks (WSN). In the context of the continuous development of these systems, the costs of the elements that form the monitoring system are decreasing. In this situation, the challenge is to select the optimal number of sensors and the network architecture, depending on the wireless system’s other parameters and requirements. It is a challenging task for WSN to provide scalability to cover a large area, fault tolerance, transmission reliability, and energy efficiency when no events are detected. In this article, fundamental issues concerning wireless communication in structural health monitoring systems (SHM) in the context of non-destructive testing sensors (NDT) were presented. Wireless technology developments in several crucial areas were also presented, and these include engineering facilities such as aviation and wind turbine systems as well as bridges and associated engineering facilities.
This paper presents a vision system that measures the position of an aircraft relative to the runway (RWY) during a landing approach. It was assumed that all the information necessary for a correct approach was based entirely on an analysis of the image of the runway and its surroundings. It was assumed that the way the algorithm works, as well as possible, should imitate the pilot’s perception of the runway. Taking into account the above and the fact that the infrastructure at each airport is different, it has been decided to use artificial neural networks with a dedicated learning process for any airport, based on the simulation environments. Such an action will enable the generation of a synthetic video sequence without the need for costly and time-consuming flights. The presented solution was tested in real flight conditions on an experimental aircraft, and the selected test results are presented in this article.
In the near future, the integration of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles into the common airspace will proceed. The changes taking place mean that the safety of light aircraft, ultralight aircraft and unmanned air vehicles (UAV) will become an increasing problem. The IDAAS project (Intruder Detection And collision Avoidance System) meets the new challenges as it aims to produce technically advanced detection and collision avoidance systems for light and unmanned aerial vehicles. The work discusses selected elements of research and practical tests of the intruder detection vision system, which is part the of IDAAS project. At the outset, the current formal requirements related to the necessity of installing anticollision systems on aircraft are presented. The concept of the IDAAS system and the structure of algorithms related to image processing are also discussed. The main part of the work presents the methodology developed for the needs of dedicated flight tests, its implementation and the results obtained. The initial tests of the IDAAS system carried out on an ultralight aircraft generally indicate the possibility of the effective detection of intruders in the airspace with the use of vision methods, although they also indicated the existence of conditions in which this detection may prove difficult or even impossible.
The main objective of this research was to propose a smart technology to record and analyse the attention of operators of transportation devices where human–machine interaction occurs. Four simulators were used in this study: General Aviation (GA), Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS), AS 1600, and Czajka, in which a spatio-temporal trajectory of system operator attention describing the histogram distribution of cockpit instrument observations was sought. Detection of the position of individual instruments in the video stream recorded by the eyetracker was accomplished using a pre-trained Fast R-CNN deep neural network. The training set for the network was constructed using a modified Kanade–Lucas–Tomasi (KLT) algorithm, which was applied to optimise the labelling of the cockpit instruments of each simulator. A deep neural network allows for sustained instrument tracking in situations where classical algorithms stop their work due to introduced noise. A mechanism for the flexible selection of Area Of Interest (AOI) objects that can be tracked in the recorded video stream was used to analyse the recorded attention using a mobile eyetracker. The obtained data allow for further analysis of key skills in the education of operators of such systems. The use of deep neural networks as a detector for selected instrument types has made it possible to universalise the use of this technology for observer attention analysis when applied to a different objects-sets of monitoring and control instruments.
Eye-tracking technology has evolved into a cornerstone of modern behavioral and cognitive research, providing precise insight into how individuals perceive, interpret, and interact with their visual environments