While modern chemical plants have numerous layers of protection to ensure safety, the human operator is often the final arbiter, especially during abnormal situations. It is therefore not surprising that when operators lose control over the plant, undesirable consequences including property damage, injury, and sometimes loss of lives follow. It is therefore important to continuously monitor the plant operators’ situation awareness based on their cognitive state. In this study, we make the first known attempt to infer the cognitive state of control room operators and its evolution over the course of carrying out tasks in a control room. First, we study the operator’s actions to distinguish consistent actions from inconsistent ones that allows us to identify major events in the evolution of their cognitive state. Next, we conduct experimental studies with human participants and explore the evolution of their cognitive state through patterns in their eye tracking data. Our studies reveal that two eye tracking measures, fixation duration and saccade duration, are sensitive to the cognitive state and can be used to monitor control room operators and thus prevent human error.

中文翻译：

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通过眼动追踪推断控制室操作员的认知状态，从而预防过程工业中的事故

尽管现代化工厂具有多层保护层来确保安全，但操作员通常是最终的仲裁者，尤其是在异常情况下。因此，当操作员失去对工厂的控制权时，随之而来的不良后果包括财产损失，人身伤害，有时甚至是生命损失，这也就不足为奇了。因此，重要的是根据他们的认知状态持续监视工厂操作员的情况意识。在这项研究中，我们首次尝试推断控制室操作员的认知状态及其在控制室中执行任务的过程中的演变。首先，我们研究操作员的动作，以区分一致的动作和不一致的动作，从而使我们能够识别其认知状态演变中的重大事件。下一个，我们与人类参与者进行实验研究，并通过他们的眼动追踪数据中的模式探索他们的认知状态的演变。我们的研究表明，两种眼动追踪方法（注视持续时间和扫视持续时间）对认知状态敏感，可用于监视控制室操作员，从而防止人为错误。