One of the (aviation) research labs that I work with has been doing work on pilot workload in various environments. Mostly in the sim, but we're hoping to take that work into the air also.
Apart from systems such as NASA-TLX (which is basically questionnaire based) we've been using a heart rate monitor borrowed from the human factors lab down the road as an indicator of stress levels. Annoyingly, they now want it back so we have to buy our own.
A bit of searching suggests that the ideal device may be some form of recording pulse oximeter - whilst we're not currently interested in SpO2, it does no harm to have it. So we're thinking maybe
this?.
Ultimately however, what I want to do is record heart rate against a timeline, so that this can then be merged into other data (flight recorder and voice recorder mostly - one interesting finding recently is that student pilots heart rates go up about 10% whenever they have to talk on the radio!). That and spend as little money as possible, and not intrude any more than necessary with the pilot being monitored.
Can anybody who has used these devices comment on whether this might be the right device, or point me at something more appropriate?
G