Innovative solutions for cooperative training in the maritime domain

Abstract

The chapter presents the general architecture of the CTSIM framework that is an advanced solution for cooperative training of car terminal operators. This chapter is mostly focused on the vehicle simulator and on the operator simulator that are mainly addressed to drivers and parkers operators. Indeed, the analysis of car terminals operational processes has clearly shown that their performance has a direct influence upon the overall system performances. Before going into the substance of the CTSIM design and development, a preliminary study of the state of art has been carried out. The literature review has confirmed that Modeling & Simulation has been profitably used for operators training in port environments. Indeed, many simulators are currently available for training of different operators, namely ships pilots, forklift operators, Reach Stacker operators, Straddle Carrier operators, Gantry Crane operators, Offshore Crane operators, Tower Crane operators, etc. However, there is a lack of research in the field of 3D Virtual Simulators for operators working in car terminals. Moreover the analysis of the current procedures used in car terminals has further validated the research idea CTSIM relies on confirming the potential benefits of Modeling & Simulation in such a dynamic and complex environment. In such a context, the high number of procedures that each person has to learn and how workers interact each other are relevant, therefore CTSIM is a modular simulators system composed by three interoperable simulators: an Operator Simulator, a Ship Simulator and a Vehicle Simulator. The Vehicle Simulator is able to simulate a medium car, a truck (tractor and trailer) and all the procedures performed by a driver in a car terminal while the Operator Simulator simulates with a high accuracy all the movements and gestures of a parker thanks to a technical solution which the Kinect, a tracking glove and a joystick are part of. The simulators that are part of CTSIM are integrated according to the paradigms of distributed simulation so as to be able to interact each other sharing the same virtual environment. The connection is guaranteed by a TCP/UDP protocol also able to work on separated computers; this way it is possible to have more than one Vehicle Simulator and more than one Operator Simulator for cooperative training.