Investigating Air Taxi Pilot’s Stress Response to Meteorological Changes Utilising an eVTOL Simulator

Air taxi service (ATS) is an emerging commuting mode in future urban air mobility (UAM). However, such advanced transportation poses higher requirements on pilots’ mental and physical stability. Meteorological changes at lower-level urban regions characterized by strong local variations can cause significant stress response leading to cognitive and operational mistakes of air taxi pilots. Therefore, this study aimed at proposing an electroencephalograph (EEG) approach to recognise stress levels of the air taxi pilots based on an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) flight simulation experiment. Diverse meteorological conditions were set as different stressors. Envelop curves of power spectral density (PSD) from 32-channel EEG signals were calculated to reflect the stress response from different frequency bands. The results showed that the stress levels from no meteorological stressor, mild meteorological stressor and reinforced stressor could be identified through the position relationship of PSD envelop curves on theta band. The result of secondary task indicated the stress response of reduced reaction time and ascending error rate due to the meteorological change. This provided a preliminary neuropsychological reference for safety assurance of future UAM.