SHIP TECHNOLOGY Q
“The future direction to explore for the
maritime industry is haptic human-automation interaction. It has shown promise as a physical, bi-directional communication interface. The concept is based on clearly communicating the actions of an automation system through forces on the control interfaces, supplementing visual interfaces, increasing situational awareness, and allowing a rich, mutually adaptive physical interaction between the operator and the machine intelligence. “Haptic human-automation interaction has
been successfully developed as haptic steering wheel guidance in the automotive domain, as haptic assistance for tele-operated robot arms, as a haptic flight director in an aircraft, and as a haptic gas pedal to support car-following, commercially released by Nissan in 2008. “In general, the benefits of haptic human- automation interaction include improvements in task performance at reduced physical and mental workload, and better awareness of the automation system status and intent.”
Future potential Not only can haptic feedback increase safety, claims Vrijdag, it can also reduce cost by, for instance, assisting the crew to sail at the best speed, or to select the most efficient propulsion operating mode. It could also reduce other costs, such as fines for arriving too early or late. “A vessel’s speed can be ‘guided’ by haptic
signals that can be easily pushed aside temporarily by the human if necessary,” says Vrijdag. “As a result, the pilot remains directly involved and still receives support to get to the destination on time.” “Related work on haptics aboard ships is
limited and mainly focuses on the mechatronics of the haptic stick design,” says Vrijdag. “In short, not much attention has been given to support ship control with haptics.”
Arthur Vrijdag demonstrates the potential of the DU marine haptic steering system
Haptic levers The team has started demonstrating the haptic set-up at industry events to allow users to experience a number of basic principles of haptic feedback in shipping. The system – which is the world’s first
haptic ship simulator that allows rapid prototyping and testing of haptic support solutions for the maritime industry – was constructed by research engineer Frank Hoeckx who built a test setup in collaboration with automation supplier Bachmann and the Rotterdam-based supplier of simulators VSTEP. Two 1 Degree-of- Freedom (DOF) levers of
an existing custom-made setup are mounted on rotational discs. Each Haptic Lever therefore has two DOF – a rotation for the RPM Lever, and one for the Azimuth Angle disc on which the RPM lever is mounted. Both rotations are actuated by a separate Maxon motor through steel cables, realising a force and position transmission without noticeable play. The RPM Levers are able to rotate to 80°
forwards and backwards, and the Azimuth Angle disc can rotate 270° in clockwise and counterclockwise direction. Each haptic lever can be controlled to
simulate a wide range of passive dynamics (i.e., stiffness, damping, inertia, friction etc.), as well as to render vibrations and – essential for human-automation interaction – forces that guide or constrain. Through vibrations, or short force pulses, a warning can be given to the helmsman. This can be used instead of a visual or auditory warning system, for instance to avoid grounding in shallow waters or when deviating too far from the planned track. “Haptics is more than vibrations, even
though most people immediately think of this, perhaps due to its use in mobile phones. “The unique ability of our set-up is that it
can smoothly render forces that guide movement of the handles, or constrain them. Such bi-directional communication allows shared control between helmsman and automation support systems.”
Industry response The team are pleased with the shipping industry’s response to their new haptic system. “The basic tests show that the autopilot and
haptic algorithms can be changed and tuned, such that the researchers have full control over the experimental set-up,” concludes Vrijdag. “It means that our maritime haptic
simulator allows for human-in-the loop experiments to explore potential benefits of haptic feedback for maritime applications. “The next step is to further develop one or
The marine haptic system has created great interest whenever it has been exhibited
more application cases and to bring this technology from a simulator environment to the real world together with industrial partners. Interested industrial parties are welcome to get in touch: feeling is believing!”
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