Impact of eye-trackers on maritime trainer-trainee experience

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of using eye-trackers on manual manoeuvring training in bridge simulator, which is a crucial part of Dynamic positioning training. In the first part, results of short survey of dynamic positioning, manual manoeuvring training and eye-tracking technology are presented. These shows that growing demand from oil and gas industry for qualified DP operators but the training itself is long and expensive. On the other hand, increasingly domains of application using eye-tracker as an assistive tool for training. Therefore it would be significant to design a new DP training method, specifically manual manoeuvring with assistant of eye-trackers. The thesis then designs a case-control experiment to identify the difference between normal training method and new training method which applies eye-trackers to change trainers' intervention and debriefing activity. The detail of experimental design includes participants selection, scenario design, training procedures, outcome measurement, experiment time arrangement, variables and hypotheses definition and experiment execution. The results indicates that eye-tracker is not a necessary tool when experts intervene and guide the novices familiarize the operation. But it improves the efficiency of debriefing with great extent. The results also indicate that a right visual strategies of DP operators can improve the performance of manual manoeuvring operation.