A number of improvements to the application were proposed by Bjarne Augestad and Per Haveland, two senior surveyors at Gard and Marius Schønberg, Vice President at Gard and Head of Loss Prevention section B.6. The key improvements proposed by the surveyors, together with some additional improvements proposed by the authors are presented below:
• Adding vessel floor plans: Schønberg and Haveland would like to have floor plans of the vessels explored implemented in the application. They suggests implementing a feature similar to the ones found in many video games where the floor plans could serve as a 2D map for the users position. Users can then navigate around the scan by utilizing the floor plan map which tells them their exact position in the floor plan. In addition, this would give users extra information about objects they are looking at in the environments. For instance, if a user is moving towards a motor, the user can look at the virtual map and see that the motor they are moving towards is an auxiliary engine.
• More detailed photos of objects: Although Augestad thinks the general quality of the 360° images are good, he would like to have additional photos within the 360° images. For instance if a user is looking at a 360° photo where life saving equipment is visible, users of the application should be able to click the life saving equipment to view more detailed 2D photos of it. This would make it easier for users of the application to investigate important objects in further detail. However, this would significantly increase the time spent implementing the Unity scene of an environment, as these interactive points and additional photos would have to be manually placed for each photo and object.
• Live streaming of scanned material: Schønberg suggests implementing functionality where a surveyor can put on his VR headset and command vessel crew to receive scans of desired objects or rooms in real time. This would make it easier for the surveyor to receive materials of the areas he is interested in and harder for vessel crew to try avoid scanning unflattering areas. This would however require a fast and responsive internet connection for both parts which may be hard at sea. In addition this would require writing algorithms to automatically set up a Unity scene, import the scan taken, place Image Anchors, build the scene and export it online. With the current used method for gathering material and application architecture, this may be difficult.
• Connecting the application to vessels electronic systems: Most modern vessels today have on board electronic systems. Augestad suggests connecting the application to these so that the Points of Interest can extract more detailed information about technical equipment, valves and motors maintenance and operational history. This would result in vessel scans having digital twins of technical equipment and systems on board. However, this would require that the vessel to be scanned has an internet connection in order to retrieve updated information when a surveyor wishes to inspect a certain scan. In addition, different vessels may have completely different electronic systems which would make it hard to implement good solutions working for the different systems.
• Automate image placement and rotation: The most time consuming part of creating a virtual environment in Unity is to place the 360° images and rotate them in a such way so that
they correspond to the 3D environment. Using AI and computer vision to recognize matching patterns between the 360° images and the LiDAR scan could help place and rotate the Image Anchors automatically. However, this would require significant technical knowledge about computer vision and AI which are two difficult subject areas.
• Different scan quality depending on the device: There are many available VR devices in the market with different processing power. Since better scan quality leads to more expensive rendering, the quality of the loaded scans could be automatically chosen to provide optimal frame rate for the device being used. VR sickness could then be reduced.
All things considered, adding vessel floor plans seems like the most useful proposed feature as this would significantly help users navigate around the virtual environment and navigate to desired objects. Implementing such a feature does not come with any disadvantages and does not increase the time spent setting up new virtual environments. Implementing functionality which detects device hardware specifications and loads environments according to them would also be a useful feature. By having this functionality, users would be presented environments optimized for their devices automatically which would increase the achieved frame rate and therefore also overall user experience. Implementing such a feature would not impose any great challenges. It is therefore highly recommended to implement vessel floor plans and map functionality as well as automatic device specification detection in the application.
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Conducting physical vessel surveys has been difficult for Gard during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Gard faces a large amount of outstanding vessel surveys. Gard’s current way of conducting remote surveys was deemed not satisfactory. The goal of this thesis was therefore to develop a VR application for conducting remote vessel surveys. The application should offer a better solution for conducting remote surveys compared to existing methods used by Gard. By making a VR application, a more realistic and immersive experience compared to traditional methods through a 2D screen is achieved. In addition, exploring vessels in virtual reality makes it possible to observe and investigate findings in a more natural and interactive way. Important details that can be missed through a traditional screen are more easily observed in VR. The main benefit of conducting remote surveys is that they can be performed from anywhere in the world as it is no longer required for surveyors to physically board the vessel being inspected. It is more environmental friendly and cost effective since there is no need to pay flight tickets and accommodation for surveyors. In addition, the inspected vessel’s operational availability is not affected when surveys are being performed remotely. The only requirement for conducting remote surveys using the proposed method is that the vessel crew has the necessary equipment to gather material for the survey.
7.1 Equipment
The virtual environments explored in the developed application are created by combining LiDAR models with 360° images. The equipment used was the LiDAR sensor present in modern mobile devices from Apple and the GoPro Max to capture 360° images. The LiDAR sensor from the latest mobile devices from Apple was chosen because of its current and future availability. This makes it possible for everyone to create accurate 3D models of objects and environments. The GoPro Max was chosen as the preferred 360° camera because of its high image resolution, user friendliness and robust build.
The LiDAR scans captured in this project gives an accurate representation about the scanned environment. However, in complex environments the accuracy of the LiDAR sensor used in this project is deemed insufficient. This results in a general lack of detail in the resulting model’s geometry and texture. The 360° images from the GoPro Max are considered to hold a high quality.
From the images, it is possible to see minor but relevant details aboard a vessel such as cracks and rust. However, it is not possible to create a virtual model from the images alone as they lack spatial information. By combining the two methods to create a virtual environment, the limitations of the separate methods can be avoided. What the LiDAR model lacks in detail is achieved in the 360°
images and what the 360° images lack in spatial information is provided by a LiDAR model. In this way the combination of the two methods complete each other resulting in virtual environments of high quality.