Prof. Evangelos Markopoulos testing the technology at TUAS Game Lab prior the conference presentation.
Finnish innovative research in Virtual Reality for Maritime Safety wins two first place awards in the 10th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive InfoCommunications
Maritime Safety Education with innovative VR applications seems to be a new way to address major safety training challenges faced today in the maritime sector.
The research paper on Maritime Safety Education with VR Technology (MarSEVR), presented last week at the CogInfoCom 10th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive InfoCommunications 23-24-25 October 2019, in Naples, Italy, won the Best Paper Award from Future Internet Journal review committee, but also the Best Paper Award of the Conference. It must be noted that it is quite rare for a research paper to receive both the Journal and the Conference award in international high impact research meetings.
The research was led by Professor Dr. Eng. Evangelos Markopoulos from HULT International Business School (U.K) and Fellow of the Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS) Research Group of Futuristic Interactive Technologies (Finland), by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Eng. Mika Luimula, Director of the TUAS Game Lab (Finland), Mrs Jenny Lauronen and Mrs Pihla Lehto from Aboa Mare, a Maritime Academy at Novia University of Applied Sciences (Finland) and by Mr. Sami Laukkanen from TUAS.
Prof. Evangelos Markopoulos (4th from left), Prof. Luimula (3rd from left) and their VR development team.
Their paper presents the development of a virtual training technology that can be used in maritime safety training. Their system passed the testing phase and operates as a full working prototype. The technology has been developed with a multidisciplinary team consisting of maritime specialists, computer scientists, business developers and VR experts. The technology is a cost effective, portable maritime training system that can be used on board, in training centers or even at home environments. Boosting situation awareness in navigation with VR- training applications is an easy and efficient method to practice whenever an officer has time for training. This can be done in an effective and fun way, giving measurable training progress indexes. The paper emphasizes on the need of VR Training in the shipping industry, the industry challenges and the description of the proof-of -concept through the MarSEVR (Maritime Safety Education with VR) technology. The main objective in the paper is to present a prototype of the technology which can be utilized to train trainees and professionals in immersive training scenarios.
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MarSERVE-VR-Napoli-IEEE-050-PID6114963
