It is strange that Virtual Reality, for years an essential instrument in the aeronautic world, hasn’t appeared in the maritime environment. But this fact doesn’t mean that there aren’t company working on this subject. The main examples are Videotel and Wilhelmsen both E-learning providers that in the last month started to test the VR technology, focused on different aims.
Maritime has ahead of it an innovation which will transform the way we sail the seas.
Recently the studies about VR on gaming highlighted one thing: the member of the Generation Z (the current teenagers) whilst gaming through VR technologies, aren’t just concentrating on the game but are completely immersed in it and consequently have developed a new dimension of behaviour.
In the shipping world, VR technologies can be used during the crew training to develop an instinctively natural behaviour in response to a specific situation.
The first immediate advantage could be saving time in case of emergency, and it could also improve the operator’s concentration and memory. Through VR training it is possible to create different cases and situations, such that the crew could adopt different strategies and after studying the results, choose the best response for each situation, reducing future mistakes. Moreover the studies show an experience in VR can be useful for our visual memory, reducing the reliance on emergency message with every single crew member being able to recall their duties through their own eyes. When dealing with a multicultural crew in a stressful situation avoiding comprehension and communication problems is an obvious advantage.
Reducing the errors, reduces the economic loss too. When at sea every minute is essential and it can make the difference between life and death.
Written by Nicolas Spirito.