A study on navigator’s mental workload in ship handling simulator

Usage of a ship handling simulator extend to many topics such as crew trains, evaluation of nautical instrument and research of human factor etc. In any case, it is necessary to observe operator´s behavior at bridge work. The procedures of performed operator´s task could be recorded by a monitoring video camera. However, it is difficult to estimate operator´s mental workload at each performance from the monitoring video. In this paper, practical technique is introduced for presuming navigator´s mental workload in ship handling simulator by using data of navigator´s nasal temperature which is measured by thermal image video camera. And effectiveness of this technique is examined by some practical simulations.