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.