Maritime Safety Education with VR Technology (MarSEVR)

This paper presents the development of a virtual training technology that can be used in maritime safety training. This system is under testing phase and has being 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 the-concept through the MarSEVR (Maritime Safety Education with VR) technology. The main objective in this paper is to present a prototype of the technology which can be utilized to train trainees and professionals in immersive training scenarios.