Design of an Augmented Reality System for the Live Visualization of Ship Identification Data

Design of an Augmented Reality System for the Live Visualization of Ship Identification Data

Witte, Tieme (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering)

de Winter, J.C.F. (mentor)
van de Have, J. (mentor)
Dodou, D. (graduation committee)
Eisma, Y.B. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Offshore and Dredging Engineering

2020-08-19

Newly educated sailors have a tendency to neglect the outside view when sailing [1], instead relying on systems like the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) [2] for information on ships in the area.Augmented Reality (AR) has been proposed as a solution to this problem, by visualising ships in the area in 3D at their physical location using a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), including a data table shown above the ship containing information useful for navigation. This thesis describes the design of an AR application to achieve this goal. The designed application is shown to work anywhere where Automatic Identification System (AIS)data is available, and can show ship information close to the sending ship’s actual location. The app is then evaluated, and its problems are identified. Subsequently, two of these problems, namely occlusion and limited Field of View (FoV), are further evaluated. Four possible solutions for the occlusion problem are presented,which work by moving the data table that is shown above the occluded ship hologram so that the user will still be able to access the data when a ship is occluded. Two solutions move the data of the occluded ship vertically up and down respectively, so that the user can access the data of the farther ship by looking up or down. The other two solutions move the data horizontally, showing the data of the farther ship to the left or right of the closer ship, depending on which side the farther ship is located. In the last solution, the data table of the closer ship is also moved, in the opposite direction of the data of the farther ship. These solutions are tested on four participants: two students and two experts. The main results of the thesis are a working application that visualises ships in the area in AR using live AIS data, an overview of identified problems with the app and an analysis of four possible solutions for the occlusion problem. Although no definite best solution for the occlusion problem was found, the results indicate that the solution where the data of both the near and far ship is moved horizontally shows the most potential out of the four tested to be used for marine navigation.

Augmented Reality
Navigation
Royal IHC
Head mounted display
HoloLens
Situational awareness
Occlusion
Field of View

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:10ffea49-9585-48ac-8ff4-647741871710

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Tieme Witte