The A340 on its first climbout on October 25th, 1991
Double logging from remote video on board A340 route proving flight at Air France in November 1992
Landing at Quito with Lufthansa in A340 route proving campaign in November 1992
2.4.7. REVIEW OF FLIGHT & DUTY TIME REGULATIONS
A review of flight and duty time regulations (Cabon et al, 2002) and a survey by questionnaires on fatigue and stress (Bourgeois-Bougrine, 1999, 2002) was also conducted to identify causes and manifestations of fatigue and to propose recommendations or specifications to be included in the definition of work-rest schedules for airlines pilots. Indeed, fatigue reported by short- and long-range (SRF and LRF) pilots corresponds to an acute fatigue related to sleep deprivation due mainly to work schedules: night flights, jet-lag, successive early wake-ups... For SRF, work constraints (time pressure, number of legs per day and consecutive days on) contribute to increase fatigue. The results of this study emphasize first, the need to introduce chrono-biological rules in aircrew scheduling to prevent fatigue or at least to limit its impact ; second, that flight and duty time limitations have to take into account the flight categories because of the additional fatigue effect of multi-leg flights and work constraints in SRF.
2.4.8. ELECTRONIC PILOT ALERTNESS MONITORING STUDIES
Initially, the EPAM concept was aimed at detecting and increasing aircrew alertness by monitoring aircrew activity. The concept was based on the simple assumption that sleepiness tends to decrease the activity of the pilot. Monitoring the number of actions of the aircrew was therefore thought to be a good indicator of a pilot’s alertness variations. Below a certain activity threshold, a visual and an aural warning would be triggered in order to increase pilot awareness of possible decrease in alertness. Its former name was the Pilot Guard System (PGS). BAW Captain Adrian Elsey developed the PGS with Page Aerospace (Speyer and Elsey, 1995, Elsey and Speyer, 1996) but a more direct measure of alertness has been subsequently added to the concept. The privacy and acceptability requirements for this system should not comprise any overly intrusive aspects since pilots do not particularly want to be equipped with sensors. The only useable parameter is ocular activity as measured by means of video processing provided the data is de-identified and even erased post-flight. Furthermore, an early review of existing systems in other industries, in particular car driving, shows that ocular activity is very sensitive to alertness variations.
The aim of an EPAM system is also to facilitate napping in the cockpit to decrease sleep pressure. But, as cockpit napping is more and more being allowed by airlines, the risk of sleep inertia in the napping pilot is increased as well as impaired alertness in the non-napping pilot because of increased monotony (reduced communications, lower light intensity). Monitoring of the non-napping pilot should hence contribute to avoid simultaneous sleepiness in the two pilots. The concept is supposed to achieve this. The initial definition of this evolved concept and its early evaluation study was presented in the dissertation of Jean-Jacques Speyer for the Human Factors in Aviation degree of the University Paris 5 (Speyer, 1999). Through an internship at Airbus the following year, Sylvie Denuit and Lieven Caboor and ENSICA performed a further study on different eye and gaze tracking systems available on the market. The common dissertation for their VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Engineering degree led to a preliminary system specification (Denuit, Caboor 2002) as well as to obtaining the 2002 annual BARCO Award for best inventiveness. Gradually developed over 28 flight trials at the late Sabena between 1999 and 2001, a prototype system was evaluated during a Toulouse-Hong Kong A340-600 Route Proving return flight in June 2002 with further evaluation work to be performed during 2004 and 2005 in the frame of an EC contract called Drive Safe as well as through Airbus France cockpit studies Preface 3. The EPAM system should really be considered as a “safety net”
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本文链接地址：Getting to grips with Fatigue & Alertness Management(15)
