An ECG-Based Approach to Pilots’ Instantaneous High Stress

Abstract

Aim: According to current evaluation method of the stress level, a novel method will be put forward, which regard area of pilots’ heart rate changes on a single aircraft flight as a method and algorithm of stress intensity indexes to solve the problem of stress evaluation in response to the instantaneous high stress. Various methods will be applied to give quantitative assessment of single-flight stress intensity, e.g. the least square method to fit the waveforms of heart rate, inflection point abstracting of it, calculation of the area and extreme value of heart rate waveform, fixed window analysis and multi-scale analysis, etc. Results: The multi-scale analysis on rising area, falling area and the total area of the relative indexes of pilots’ heart rate waveform shows a trend of gradual stability after a period of changes, among which the variation of the total area is the most obvious. The application of multi-scale algorithm helps to discover a functional relationship between stress intensity and flight training times, which provides scientific and effective means of evaluation of stress for flights training of aircraft. Conclusions: A quantitative analysis method using area of heart rate waveform will be put forward to evaluate stress intensity during training process of pilots of aircraft. Through the analysis of the function between stress intensity and frequency of training, in addition, multi-scale calculation is also applied, to discover the functional relationship between stress intensity of pilots and frequency of training frequency.