Simon Schwerd wins Best Paper Award

21 July 2020

For the second time since 2018, a researcher of the professorship of Aircraft Dynamics and Flight Guidance wins the "Best Paper Award" of the International Conference on Engineering Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics (EPCE) on the occasion of this year's Human Computer Interaction International (HCII), which had to be held online this year due to a pandemic. The prize winner is M.Sc. Simon Schwerd. The title of his article is "Experimental Validation of an Eye-Tracking-Based Computational Method for Continuous Situation Awareness Assessment in an Aircraft Cockpit". In this paper, Simon Schwerd shows how a cognitive pilot assistance system is able to form a picture of the mental state of pilots in the cockpit in real time on the basis of semantic eye movement measurements and corresponding model data. The system was implemented, integrated and tested in our research flight simulator for Manned-unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) fighter aircraft missions.

The work is highly relevant for the cockpit of the planned European fighter aircraft system NGWS/FCAS. A major challenge there will be to master the high work demands on the cockpit crews.

Prof. Schulte (co-author of the article) and the whole team are enthusiastic about this extraordinary success. Unfortunately the award ceremony will not take place live on stage. The screenshot gives an impression of the online ceremony.