Thesis Augmented Reality
Job Mewe just graduated a couple of months ago from the Maritime Institute Willem Barentsz after an internship period of 6 months at QPS B.V. located in Zeist, The Netherlands. During his internship period, he researched the use of Augmented Reality (AR) during piloting operations. Below, a short summary of the research.
Augmented Reality during piloting operations
The research was done to find out whether Augmented Reality would be a useful addition for the pilots during their work. It was done at QPS because they have their own piloting software, called Qastor 3. So as a product for my thesis I also made a design with a mock-up and design specification for the use of AR in piloting software, specifically inside Qastor.
Research was done on multiple fronts. A major part of the research was done with the help of Dutch Loodswezen. I did some interviews with some of their employees, many of the pilots filled in a survey and they also let me go onboard two ships during piloting operations. During these trips the pilot answered many questions. All of this was very educational.
In the end, I came to the conclusion that AR could be a useful addition to piloting operations, but still testing needs to be done. One design is made to be used as a separate screen inside of the Qastor 3 application during navigation. The other design was designed to be used during docking operation with AR glasses (see image above for an example). When the needed information during docking is displayed inside of the AR glasses the pilot does not need to look away from the side of the ship to the laptop. The pilot can keep its eyes on the side of the ship, in the real world.
