Mental Workload of Ship’s Navigator – A Few Comments on Heart Rate Variability during Navigational Watch Keeping –

Abstract. A navigator efforts to handle the ship for safe navigation by judging navigational information on own ship’s condition, targets and current-wind effect, and he/she has the responsibility of human lives and economical values under the judgment. The navigator keeps a men-tal workload during the navigational watch keeping. Therefore, we need the development of a support system to reduce the mental workload with human-system cooperation based on navigator’s KANSEI, and we must research on an index to asessment of a mental workload for the first step. The purpose of this paper is to find charac-teristics of navigator’s mental workload with heart rate variability (R-R interval). The experiment carry out for six kinds of sea area in Japan, and the subject is chief officer of a training ship in Kobe University of Mercantile Marine.