Research on Advanced Navigation Aids System based on Augmented Reality

Abstract

With the increase of maritime traffic and the advent of bigger and faster ships, the risk of maritime accidents has been increased continuously.According to the recent report, many maritime accidents occurred due to human-error such as including inadequate watch keeping and/or mistake in ship handling. For these reasons, many navigational bridge equipment was developed using new IT technologies to provide various information for safe navigation. Despite these efforts, it cannot be reduced maritime accidents as expected. Because, navigational equipment provides too much information, which are not well organized so that users feel them complicated rather than helpful. Therefore, we need to study how to display information to understand more easily and to make a decision correctly and promptly. Augmented Reality (AR) is a computer graphic technology that blends virtual reality and real world. Recently, AR technologies have been widely applied in our daily life since it can express information more effectively. In this paper, we propose a new concept of navigational system based on AR technologies. Then, we review experimental results of ship-handling simulator and open sea test to verify efficiency of proposed system. Consequently, we hope that our AR system contribute to prevent accidents and to improve efficiency of navigation.