Evaluation of Eye Metrics as a Detector of Fatigue

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA517342&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Evaluation of Eye Metrics as a Detector of Fatigue

AFRL-RH-WP-JA-2010-0002

R. Andy McKinley
Lindsey K. McIntire
Regina Schmidt
Andrea Pinchak
John L. Caldwell


The purpose of this study was to evaluate oculometrics as a detector of fatigue in Air Force relevant environments using one night of sleep deprivation. Method: Ten civilian participants volunteered to participate in this study. Each was trained on three performance tasks: target identification, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) landing, and the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT). Experimental testing of the three tasks began after 14 hours awake, and continued every two hours until 28 hours of sleep deprivation was reached. Results: Data analyses showed statistically significant decrements in performance as the level of sleep deprivation increased, for both the PVT and the target identification task. These performance declines correlated with increases in proportion of eye closure and declines in approximate entropy of pupil position. Conclusion: The results provide evidence that eye metrics can be used to detect the onset of fatigue, potentially in advance of significant changes in operator performance, suggesting a way to predict fatigue-induced declines in performance before they manifest.