Ship Handling Trainer Using Personal Devices
Abstract
A fundamental skill that must be developed by all Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs) is shiphandling. Currently, the only ways for a junior SWO to practice shiphandling are through the Conning Officer Virtual Environment (COVE) training system at Basic Division Officers Course (BDOC), the Navigation, Seamanship, and Ship-Handling (NSS) trainers at fleet concentration areas, and driving their actual ship. In order to increase opportunities to practice this critical skill, this thesis investigated the effectiveness of a tablet-based shiphandling training application. A prototype tablet training application was developed for this study. The training application includes a user-controllable virtual ship in a pier-landing scenario, with optional wind and current that shows the resultant forces on the ship. For the effectiveness study, the tablet group practiced pier landings using the tablet application for twenty minutes before executing a similar scenario in COVE graded by a BDOC instructor using BDOC evaluation methods. The control group conducted the COVE scenario without using the application. The study concludes that the tablet group performed better than the control group, but not at a statistically significant level. More testing will be needed to establish that the application does indeed improve performance.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1069747
Entities
People
- Joshua J. Stewart
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School