Shipyard Efficiencies via Training in Safety, Augmented-procedures, and Immersive Live-assistance (SETSAIL)

The US Naval Shipyards are in critical need of cost-saving and time-saving technologies that can improve their vital function of maintaining fleet readiness. Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality/Mixed Reality (AR/VR/MR) has the potential to transform the landscape of shipyard operations via accelerated training in a simulated environment, improved safety practices at the dry docks and efficient maintenance procedures on the ships. However, the primary barriers to entry of these technologies are (a) cost of the hardware and software; (b) ergonomic challenges such as motion sickness; (c) cybersecurity and technological hurdles; just to name a few. XR technologies are beginning to be introduced into the Naval Shipyards for safety training as well as operations. However, the current approaches in AR/VR don’t consider the fact that training and operations are interrelated processes, and knowledge gained during one need to seamlessly flow into the other. Furthermore, the support procedures have to be hand-coded, as with any AR/VR authoring system. Another challenge is that a vast plethora of heads-up displays that come on the market become obsolete and sometimes fail. Hence, it is imperative that the AR/VR technology procured for the shipyards is well worth the investment, is scalable, and device-agnostic, and is not playing “catchup” with device compatibility. Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI), in collaboration with Aptima, Inc. (the QSI team), proposes “Shipyard Efficiencies via Training in Safety, Augmented-procedures, and Immersive Live-assistance (SETSAIL)”, to provide an immersive ecosystem that enables speedy content generation and integration of maintenance and safety procedures with training, and provides continuous knowledge transfers between them to further improve the quality of maintenance. The SETSAIL solution will employ  modern web-based AR/VR technologies to provide (a) hands-free virtual co-location, and contextual procedural content and remote assistance for performance support; and (b) and enable eLearning profiles to facilitate a distributed learning architecture, and to facilitate continuum of learning in Navy schools, and generate metrics that quantify student performance in safety procedures and identify maintenance gaps.