Augmented reality in maritime operations

Problem: For maritime safety, it is crucial to have high-quality collaboration between crew members and with crews onshore or on other units (e.g., other vessels, ports, and wind farms). A challenge to collaboration may be that each crew member has different perspectives and different information available (e.g. what they observe directly, observe through instrumentation, or draw from their memory or mental models). Augmented Reality (AR) may improve maritime collaboration. My Ph.D. project aims to identify how AR can facilitate collaboration in marine operations. 

Approach: A literature review, a lab experiment, and a field study research how different AR applications can support (shared) situation awareness, (team) decision-making, and communication among crew members. 

Methodology: The literature review was done according to the PRISMA statement. The lab experiment used Virtual Reality scenes simulating ship operations. Participants were on the bridge and carried out information-gathering tasks. Half the time they had AR and half the time they did not. I collected data on situation awareness, communication, usability, and advantages and disadvantages. The field study tested an AR prototype for collaborative ship navigation on three voyages in Norwegian coastal waters. Data was collected through interviews, observations, and questionnaires about (shared) situation awareness, (team) decision-making, communication, usability, technology acceptance, and advantages and disadvantages.  

Contributions: Findings aim to inform the development and research of AR applications for collaboration in safety-critical operations like ship navigation and facilitate improvement of the integration and usability of user interfaces. 

Learn more about my work on LinkedIn, Research Gate, OSF, and Google Scholar.