A meta-model for comprehensive pilot modeling

Piloted flight involves the participation of both an air vehicle and a pilot. Modeling humans is becoming more and more important due to the growing integration of automatic systems interacting with the pilot at an ever deeper cognitive level. This research wants to offer a systematic approach to analyzing pilot behavior during a mission. The development of the pilot behavior meta-model was preceded by a careful definition of the required terminology, starting from the important assumption that human behavior is inherently teleological and therefore directed towards either explicit or implicit goals. A custom test performed with two pilots showed how humans respond to an unexpected event with a perceptible variation in muscle activation; the mechanism falls within the pilot's voluntary behavior as it aims at achieving a goal that changed following the event itself. The proposed meta-model can be adapted and used to analyze complex pilot behavior, possibly leading to new paradigms in the design of training procedures or novel cockpit layouts.