FNUSA-ICRC Teams Are Involved in the Development of a New Technology by the Honeywell’s Aerospace Division

The aim of the project is to develop a technology for monitoring and evaluating the state of alertness of the pilot with use in aviation. For several years, a research team at the Honeywell’s branch in Brno has been working on this topic, addressing it as part of its contribution to the European Clean Sky II initiative. Technology should increase flight safety in the future and also allow new ways of organizing air transport. The Sleep Medicine research team and engineers from the Biomedical Engineering research team contribute their knowledge and equipment. The first part of the unique project, which will gather data from volunteers primarily from professional and interested pilots, took place at the beginning of February.

Sleep Medicine research group monitors various physiological functions on volunteers using the Grael device and stores the acquired data into the database. This is typically polysomnography equipment, which is a multiparametric examination performed in a sleeping lab to diagnose sleep disorders. The uniqueness of the research lies in the fact that this measurement is carried out under special conditions in the A320 special test cockpit, located at Honeywell’s premises. This device serves to develop and validate new technologies that could monitor the level of alertness of pilots during the flight in the future. Research nurses and biomedical engineer of FNUSA-ICRC provide preparation of pilots before examination, correct setting and placement of all relevant sensors and after the placement of a volunteer to test the cockpit, together with a physician they evaluate all the parameters to provide Honeywell employees information about when the volunteer fell asleep and what changes of physiological sleeping functions had preceded so that the new cockpit alertness and sleep recognition system can be reliably verified.