Newly educated sailors have a tendency to neglect the outside view when sailing [1], instead relying on systems like the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) [2] for information on ships in the area.Augmented Reality (AR) has been proposed as a solution to this problem, by visualising ships in the area in 3D at their physical location using a Head-Mounted Display (HMD), including a data table shown above the ship containing information useful for navigation. This thesis describes the design of an AR application to achieve this goal. The designed application is shown to work anywhere where Automatic Identification System (AIS)data is available, and can show ship information close to the sending ship’s actual location. The app is then evaluated, and its problems are identified. Subsequently, two of these problems, namely occlusion and limited Field of View (FoV), are further evaluated. Four possible solutions for the occlusion problem are presented,which work by moving the data table that is shown above the occluded ship hologram so that the user will still be able to access the data when a ship is occluded. Two solutions move the data of the occluded ship vertically up and down respectively, so that the user can access the data of the farther ship by looking up or down. The other two solutions move the data horizontally, showing the data of the farther ship to the left or right of the closer ship, depending on which side the farther ship is located. In the last solution, the data table of the closer ship is also moved, in the opposite direction of the data of the farther ship. These solutions are tested on four participants: two students and two experts. The main results of the thesis are a working application that visualises ships in the area in AR using live AIS data, an overview of identified problems with the app and an analysis of four possible solutions for the occlusion problem. Although no definite best solution for the occlusion problem was found, the results indicate that the solution where the data of both the near and far ship is moved horizontally shows the most potential out of the four tested to be used for marine navigation.

The worldwide company named Royal IHC proposed this graduation project. Royal IHC is a reliable supplier of dredge vessels. Trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) is one of the company’s main products for port maintenance. A dredge operator is doing all the dredge control task in the dredge operator cockpit. The human-machine interface (HMI) of the dredge operator cockpit is developed on a perpetual basis. The system become more and more complex. Therefore, novice operators need to spend longer time in training in order to be fully efficient. The latest interface technology augmented reality has attracted attention. Royal IHC is interested in head-mounted devices, especially HoloLens. Royal IHC sees the potential of HoloLens in terms of supporting the control tasks of dredge operators, but this assumption still needs to be proven by operational research. Therefore, the essence of this project is an explorative study, which is targeted to discover if there are possibilities of HoloLens to support dredge control work of novice operators. After technology research and user research, some tasks are selected and concpets are created.The core of the concepts is to extract this information and provide it in a more user-friendly way. The operator can then directly see the essential information through the HoloLens and will not be disturbed by other information, which is not relevant at the moment. The operator does not need to switch attention between screens and real world either. However, there are two different perspective for this concept: the first person’s perspective and the third person’s perspective.The concepts were tested with IHC employees and students. It is found that: Compared with the current system, HoloLens applications can give the information in a more straightforward way. Compared with the current system, simplified signals with its spatial property in HoloLens applications are easier to understand. Thus, compared with the current system, HoloLens applications require less workload. With the third person’s perspective, operators could have a more transparent overview of the situation than with the first person’s perspective. It is more easily for novice operators to learn the use of HoloLens applications than people without any dredge knowledge.