Understanding the Eye of the Navigator

Abstract

The daily job of the navigator has changed significantly with the introduction of electronic navigation and integrated navigation systems. The navigator has progressed from using most of his time to find and fix the position, to understand and control complex system design to increase situation awareness and facilitate safe navigation for the officer of the watch. This article presents Eye Tracking data that has been collected on board the world’s fastest littoral combat ship, compared with similar datasets collected in a bridge navigation simulator. The data has been analyzed to determine how we better can use maritime navigation simulators and develop bridge design and general user interface to ease the burden of the navigator.