A basic study on navigator's mental workload by wavelet transform

A navigator always handles a ship under pressure for safe navigation. They are keeping their good tension for navigational watches while the ship's environments and her conditions are changing every moment. We consider that their mental workload is related to the behavior for safe navigation, and his/her body and physiological response are suitable for picking up the characteristics of mental workload. Especially, R-R interval has been used to estimate mental workload of air pilots and car drivers of transportation systems from many indices, which are blood pressure, respiration and perspiration etc. Here, R-R interval is interval time R to R, which is one of heartbeat consist of P, Q, R, S and T. The assessment of mental workload is effective methods for navigational system's development with human-systems coordination. Therefore, we propose to pick up R-R interval's characteristics between body and psychological response. We measured R-R intervals of eight kinds of working conditions on board, and analyze it with statistics, fast Fourier transform and wavelet transform.