Fatigue Detection of Air Traffic Controllers Using Metabolomic Methods

Fatigue of air traffic controllers at work is a serious problem for civil aviation safety. Fatigue detection of air traffic controllers (ATC) is very important for controlling fatigue risk. There several methods for detection of fatigue such as electroencephalogram, eye tracking techinique. In this paper, we disrobed a biochemical method for fatigue detection using metabolomic methods to detect air traffic controllers' urines. 90 volunteers were recruited and their urines were collected before and after they worked for one or 6 hours. The urines were analyzed using liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer with full scan mode. The acquired data was processed with Progenesis QI software which was developed for processing metabolic profiling data. Results showed that there was no compound expressed for ATC group who only worked for one hour. 3 compounds were expressed for control group who worked for 6 hours, and 6 compounds expressed for 2 ATC groups who worked for 6 hours with high workload and press compared with control group. The results indicated that fatigue led to changes in body metabolites and the changes were detectable. The results also suggested that the number of expressed compounds was related to fatigue levels.