Evaluation of Simulator-Based Exercise Using Mental Workload Monitoring System

The evaluation of simulator-based exercise in maritime society depends on specialists who have enough on-board experience like a master and/or a professor of maritime university. That is just subjective evaluation, and the reviewed data is performance of the operated vessel such as own ship course, speed, rudder angle, and their behavior on order, action, and so on. We propose that their inside response (mental workload) is also important data to evaluate their simulator-based exercise using physiological index; moreover, we have found the heart rate variability, facial (nasal) temperature, and saliva are efficient to read their mental workload. However, the evaluation was not real time yet, it is just off-line analysis. The real time data is available that the instructor gives trainee the useful advisements on the spot during the exercise. In this paper, we propose a monitoring system as an evaluation support system for simulator-based exercise using heart rate variability, and we confirm its possibility.