Members of the Simulation Development and Analysis Branch of the Research Services Directorate at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) recently supported research focused on better understanding human contributions to aviation safety by collecting data on behaviors that contribute to routine successful outcomes, safety management and system design decisions. NASA’s System Wide Safety (SWS) project team designed the SOTERIA (SWS Operations and Technologies for Enabling Resilient In-Time Assurance Human Contributions to Safety) experiment to identify current gaps and explore methods for identifying human “success” data generated by the aviation system, from personnel and within the supporting infrastructure. For this important work, the SOTERIA team received a 2023 NASA LaRC Honor Award.
The SOTERIA project collected data on successful pilot simulation evaluations. Thirteen aircrews from American Airlines went through nine different flight scenarios in this simulation project.
SOTERIA team member and Metis Lead Software Engineer Lon Kelly helped create the eye tracking system that is used to track the eyes of the pilot and the co-pilot in simulated flight scenarios in the cockpit. The system is comprised of a series of small cameras and a computer to determine which direction the pilot and the co-pilot are looking on the instrument panels to handle flight safety related scenarios.
Metis leads the contractor team supporting the NASA LaRC Simulation Development and Analysis Branch under the Agency’s SimLabs III contract.