Identifying patterns in physiological parameters of expert and novice marksmen in simulation environment related to performance outcomes

Abstract: The goal of this thesis is to investigate if it is possible to use measurements of physiological parameters to accelerate learning of target shooting for novice marksmen in Saab’s Ground combat indoor trainer (GC-IDT). This was done through a literature study that identified brain activity, eye movements, heart activity, muscle activity and breathing as related to shooting technique. The sensors types Electroencephalography (EEG), Electroocculography (EOG), Electrocardiogram (ECG), Electromyography (EMG) and impedance pneumography (IP) were found to be suitable for measuring the respective parameters in the GC-IDT. The literature study also showed that previous studies had found differences in the physiological parameters in the seconds leading up to the shot when comparing experts and novices. The studies further showed that it was possible to accelerate learning by giving feedback to the novices about their physiological parameters allowing them to mimic the behavior of the experts. An experiment was performed in the GC-IDT by measuring EOG, ECG, EMG and IP on expert and novice marksmen to investigate if similar results as seen in previous studies were to be found. The experiment showed correlation between eye movements and shooting score, which was in line with what previous studies had shown. The respiration measurement did not show any correlation to the shooting scores in this experiment, it was however possible to see a slight difference between expert and novices. The other measurements did not show any correlation to the shooting score in this experiment. In the future, further experiments needs to be made as not all parameters could be explored in depth in this experiment. Possible improvements to such experiments are i.e. increasing the number of participants and/or the number of shots as well as marking shots automatically in the data and increasing the time between shots.