A growing number of organisations in the maritime sector are beginning to use virtual-reality and augmented-reality technology for cutting-edge shipbuilding and ship design applications. What are the benefits of the technology?
One of the trailblazers in the field is Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) of Virginia, which began exploring augmented reality for production uses as far back as 2011, and has expanded its investment in the technology since then. Patrick Ryan, augmented reality (AR) engineering manager, says the company is “executing or has in process” more than 60 pilot projects to “explore how the technology can be used best in industrial settings”.
He says: “One of the main themes is that AR and virtual reality (VR) are fundamentally different. AR will not supplant VR in the design world. Engineers and designers will continue using VR to engineer new products for decades. AR is the tool that engineers will use to communicate that design intent to a skilled craftsperson or workforce.
“VR is used at the beginning of any manufacturing or production value stream during the design phases, whereas AR shines most brightly at the end of the value process, during actual production.”
One interesting pilot project has already helped NNS to improve a process related to the inspection and removal of temporary bracing used during lifting and handling operations when building large steel structures. In the past, this bracing has caused problems for staff because, over time, it can become increasingly difficult to distinguish from an ordinary structure. When the time comes to remove the temporary material, this has typically forced operatives to refer to pages and pages of drawings looking for notes indicating that a piece of structure is temporary, before identifying it in situ.
“With AR, it is straightforward to highlight the temporary structure from the digital model files, and overlay those highlights on the real world,” says Ryan. “This makes identification much easier. A pilot deployment took a piece of inspection work that was expected to last 36 hours, but using an AR method instead it was accomplished in 90 minutes.
“Most AR deployments don’t see this level of cost reduction, but this case shows that the technology can have an enormous impact.”
For Ryan, the necessity of selecting “the right authoring software, digital content, delivery hardware, use case and end user are all-important considerations to deploying a great AR pilot, let alone a permanent production change”. And he says that many of the efforts that NNS has put in over the past six years have been focused on “defining those parameters”.
He says: “There is no single solution that is great for everything. Some things we’ve learned are that tablets work pretty well – though the excitement of wearables is undeniable – tracking technologies matter and user factors matter.”
Meanwhile, John Arczynski, operations director at Index AR Solutions, which works with NNS, believes that AR will “completely revolutionise the way that work is performed in manufacturing, construction, shipbuilding, maintenance and everywhere that skilled labour is employed” because of the “tremendous value to the worker when overlaying visual information on their real world”.
As well as representing an “investment in people,” Arczynski argues that AR makes front-line workers “more capable and productive and thus more valuable”. The technology also makes “engineers and technical professionals that create AR more valuable” – providing an incentive for management to hire more.
He says: “AR creates a sustainable competitive advantage for enterprises that adopt it early. While also true of other technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence, where machines replace people, AR is different as an enterprise invests in people to gain an advantage.”
Ryan agrees that, unlike automation or robotics, AR helps a company’s skilled workforce. So companies using the technology are able to “increase in efficiency without big capital investments, while maintaining all of the smarts that people bring and robots don’t”.
Ryan adds: “AR attacks the waste of reading paper documentation. Since engineers design in a digital world now, AR replaces those drawings with digital information tied more tightly to the engineer’s design intent.”
As far as virtual reality is concerned, one company that has successfully used the technology is BAE Systems. It has developed a VR system to support its Type 26 frigate design and construction operations on the Clyde.
Paul Sweeney, account manager at Scottish Enterprise, helped to drive the development of the project. He says that VR was used on the design programme to substitute virtual representations for real-life scale mock-ups of compartments, such as the ship’s control centre. This enabled human factors analysts and operations teams to assess the build and operator friendliness of the design.
Since then, he says the company has used VR for a variety of other applications in assessment of the design for the Type 26 programme, including simulating casualty evacuation from confined spaces, a simulation of dry docking the ship, and working with suppliers of large items such as gearboxes to simulate how they will be installed on board. Another use for VR has been in modelling build and block assembly strategies for the Type 26 “to assess what capital investment would need to be made to improve shipyard infrastructure to support the programme”.
Sweeney says: “We initially utilised the simulation capability of the Glasgow School of Art’s Digital Design Studio, which includes one of the largest 3D visualisation labs in the world. But then we commissioned Virtalis to install smaller-scale VR suites in the shipyard. These are run across a live network using Virtalis’s Visionary Render software that integrates with Sener’s Foran CAD software used for all modelling and detailed design, and enables version control of the definitive design model.”
By redefining the systems and processes used, enhancing product maturity and bringing a new modelling approach to the Type 26 programme, Sweeney explains that BAE has been able to use VR to “transform the traditional design process for complex warships”.
He adds: “A new culture of collaboration has emerged, enabling a step change in programme quality and momentum. The unparalleled insight into complex designs provided by visualisation has made it an essential element of daily business. This single tool supports stakeholders, from the managing director to members of the detail design team.”
The success of this new visualisation capability has led to it being used on the Royal Navy’s latest River Class (Batch 2) offshore patrol vessel programme, as well as on the Successor submarine project, with build planning “being transformed and design of new shipbuilding facilities optimised”.
Sweeney says: “There are also cost benefits. Engineering and operations have cut half their rework budget caused by modelling errors, saving more than
£1 million. Expensive full-scale physical mock-ups of key compartments are no longer required, and build and operational safety is also benefiting from de-risking simulations of real-world procedures.”
The application of AR in the maritime sector is still in its infancy, admits Professor Uwe Freiherr von Lukas, head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research in Rostock, Germany. But he predicts that we will see a “growing number of specific services that rely on AR technology” over the next 12 months. Importantly, though, he believes that such applications will need to account for the “specific user interfaces, system architectures and business models of the maritime sector to meet the requirements of the market”. Von Lukas is also leader of the 3D Maritime network of end users, IT companies and research institutes interested in exploiting the potential of 3D computer graphics in the maritime sector.
He says: “Cheap hardware for VR and AR will make those technologies affordable even for smaller companies. The line between mobile use, desktop use, and VR use is eroding and web technology is emerging as the key for supporting a broad range of devices.”
Another issue that von Lukas thinks is important is the need for standardisation of model formats and access interfaces. He stresses that, without such standards, it will be too expensive to implement intensive use of AR and VR applications beyond company borders.
“I also see a need for research on increasing the field of view of AR displays and offering 3D representations that are designed for use in cloud-based environments like streaming – as well as on improving IT security for shared 3D representations,” he adds.
In view of the fact that shipbuilding has so many variable elements to production, Sweeney argues that the opportunity to use AR as a means of providing better design information on the shop floor is a “huge opportunity for productivity improvement”.
“The brilliance of AR is that it enables that sort of definitive and highly visual reference that gives assurance to the operator and better enables them to undertake the job with visual aids that confirm that it has been carried out to the required specification,” says Sweeney. “This ensures right first time delivery.”