Exploiting Augmented Reality for improved training and safety scenarios for large passenger ships

Recent advances of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology, has made this technology attractive for the cruise line industry. The AR and VR applications the cruise line sector is targeting is mainly related in enhancing the passenger experience on-board, i.e. using augmented reality virtual excursions [1], or in providing virtual reality gaming for cruise passengers [2]. As it is reported in [3] advanced AR, VR and XVR (mixed virtual reality) technologies will facilitate a hyper-personalised entertainment future for the cruise passengers. Besides the use of immersive technologies such as VR in marine education and training and ship bridge simulators, another domain where AR/VR has gained recently interest in maritime industry and in particular due to COVID-19 crisis, is related to remote and augmented surveys and ship inspections, already offered by leading ship classification societies. While AR/VR technology is constantly growing in several application domains such as health, manufacturing, education, safety training and retail, its full potentials for the use for real-world applications [4] in real environment of large passenger ships for training and safety applications have not been exploited yet. To this end, tailored AR applications for training and safety applications for large passenger ships as part of the EU funded H2020 project SafePASS [5,6] are presented in this paper abstract. SafePASS is an EU H2020 funded project aiming to radically redefine the evacuation processes, evacuation systems and international standards for passenger ships in all environments. SafePASS aims to develop a combination of innovative systems that will collectively monitor, process and inform during emergencies both safety personnel and passengers of the optimal evacuation routes, coupled with advanced, intuitive and easy to use, lifesaving appliances that go beyond current state-of-the-art. This includes AR applications targeting both training of crew personnel as well as safety related scenarios in case of evacuation of large passenger ships.