A Field Study Shows that AR Can Facilitate Collaboration in Ship Navigation

Collaboration among team members is crucial in safety-critical operations like ship navigation. Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to facilitate collaboration. Three components of collaboration it may facilitate are communication, team situation awareness, and team decision-making. To bring research on AR for ship navigation to the next technology readiness level and higher ecological validity, the current study tested an AR prototype in the field, on two voyages. A prototype of AR for collaborative ship navigation was developed in a research through design process. The prototype operates on a pair of Microsoft HoloLens 2 head-mounted displays. It displays pins on other vessels and sea markers and allows opening these pins for more information. Collaborative features include pointing with crosshairs and highlighting pins. The prototype was evaluated in a field study on three multi-day coastal voyages on two vessels. The ship crews’ prototype testing was observed, and the crews were interviewed and asked to fill in questionnaires. Data was analyzed through thematic analysis. The prototype evaluation indicates that AR has the potential to facilitate collaboration through supporting communication, team situation awareness, and team decision-making. It can facilitate situation awareness by supporting information gathering, getting an overview of the surroundings, mental mapping between 2D charts and the outside world, and increasing head-up time. It can support team situation awareness by facilitating visual communication about situation awareness. Team decision-making depends on team situation awareness. Other advantages include operator mobility and simplicity. Disadvantages include overreliance, insufficient screen quality, cognitive overload, and mediocre usability and technology acceptance. AR may be especially useful in time-critical operations in medium-busy waterways. With further development of accuracy, usability, technology acceptance, and unobtrusiveness, AR can facilitate collaboration and thus increase safety and efficiency in safety-critical operations like ship navigation.