Quantifying Pilot Performance and Mental Workload in Modern Aviation Systems: A Scoping Literature Review

Flight deck automation changes the nature of traditional piloting tasks, ultimately changing the cognitive requirements of the pilot. It is unclear how pilot performance should be measured as automation increases. The objective of this work is to understand the variability in experimental methodology regarding how pilot performance is measured since the introduction of flight deck automation. There were 90 articles included in this scoping literature review. Less than half of the articles investigated pilot performance (~40%), about half of the articles investigated mental workload (~45%), and almost 70% of the articles collected psychophysiological data; however, only 20% of the articles investigated human–automation interaction despite automation increasing in the flight deck. Design of resilient systems that support the needs of the pilot require consideration of human-system dynamics. As aircraft systems become more autonomous, performance metrics are increasingly derived from the human operator, reflecting a shift towards human-centered evaluation. Thus, it becomes more important to understand and model the relationship between performance, mental workload, and psychophysiological data when humans work with automation.