ARTEMIS-prosjekt D3COS: Designing Dynamic Distributed Cooperative Human-Machine Systems

For the Maritime Group, significant development of the Maritime Demonstrator has been accomplished during 2013. The Maritime Demonstrator consists of an Active Vessel Traffic Service System (A-VTS, which is a shore-based surveillance system developed by Kongsberg), a Path Planner (creates path/routes for vessels, developed by BMT), and a Portable Pilot Unit (PPU, which is a ship-based navigation unit developed by Marimatech). The Maritime Group sought to make use of two "Methods, Tools, and Techniques" that were developed in the D3CoS project:- --Design Patterns (DP) in the User Interface to support off-screen POI presentation. --PED for modelling agent workload during navigation events. As previously reported, the Maritime Demonstrator adopted agent-based functionality that was more in line with the general D3CoS project aspirations. Four new possible software agents were evaluated in terms of their implementability and possible usefulness. The four agents that we conceptually evaluated are: --Conflict Agent --Context Agent --Weather Agent --Reporting Point Agent Of these four agents, two were developed and tested by the end of 2013. Specifically, these agents are: Conflict Agent -- becomes active in overload situations, where the A-VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) operator may not have time to respond quickly enough. Weather Agent -- automates the practice of VTS operators providing weather data to individual vessels. The communication between the A-VTS, PPU, and Path Planner using protocol established during 2012 required additional development and testing. During 2013, we discovered that we needed to add additional requirements concerning visualizing the path, as well as conflict and weather data communication. Factory testing was conducted on the Maritime Demonstrator using the Conflict Agent and Weather Agent during November 2013. Test result proved satisfactory. The Sea Trial for the Maritime Demonstrator was conducted December 12, 2013 in Horten, Norway. The PPU was taken to sea onboard a boat while the A-VTS and path planner were setup onshore. The Sea Trial demonstrated the PPU, A-VTS, and path planner working together in a real-world environment, sharing vessel path data, weather data, and conflict data. The Sea Trial was completed successfully. In cooperation with the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the second round of VTS Trials was conducted in January 2014 with three VTS operators from the Norwegian Coastal Administration. This was originally scheduled for December 2013 but needed to be postponed due to sick leave and vacation schedules of the experiment subjects. In April and May, the prototype Maritime Demonstrator was merged with the baseline of the C-Scope Operator Client, which has increased its range of functionality and offers added value to future Vessel Traffic Service System deliveries.

Transportation based on cars, aircraft and ships is a key factor for modern human societies. Human operators have historically been in charge of the two main facets of transportation: vehicle control and traffic control. Technological innovations have pro gressively allowed the introduction of advanced automated assistance systems leading to a complex interplay of humans and automation which has been shown to lead in many cases to new types of hu-man errors, incidents and sometimes accidents. It has been r ecognized that further automa-tion alone cannot solve the problem and the crucial issue is how to achieve an adequate level of human-machine cooperation with shared authority. The project addresses missing key enablers for market penetration of innovative dynamic Distributed Cooperative Human-Machine Systems (DCoS). The project intends to develop affordable methods, techniques and tools which go beyond assistance systems and consequently address the specification, development and evaluation of cooperativ e systems from a multi-agent perspective where human and machine agents are in charge of common tasks, assigned to the system as a whole. A high quality user interface notably is inevitable to meet user expectations and to gain market acceptance of cooper ative systems with increased levels of automation. Already today the development of the user interface of Embedded Systems is a substantial cost driver that is constantly increasing.