Unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, are an important part of today’s society due to their vast use in various industries. However, there is a growing concern about the lack of situational awareness of drone operators due to the increase in the number of drone mishaps. This has led researchers to investigate if pilots or video game players would be better unmanned aerial vehicle operators due to the similarity of flying an aircraft and playing video games to flying a drone. Hence, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether the video game playing habits of pilots can affect their situational awareness while flying an unmanned aerial vehicle. This will be done by comparing the situational awareness of non-video game playing pilots and video game playing pilots while they operate a drone in a drone simulator. The study expects to find that pilots who play video games would have better situational awareness while flying a drone when compared to pilots who do not play video games. This study may help organizations that use unmanned aerial vehicles better select their operators. It can also be used to improve drone training methods by implementing the use of drones.
Keywords: Situational Awareness, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Aviation Safety, Pilot, Video Game Player, Personnel Selection