Abstract
This thesis will present the development of an online digital twin for NTNU's Research Vessel Gunnerus. Maritime digital twins are becoming a more and more prevalent technology used for the development, maintenance, and evolution of maritime vessels. A digital twin is at its core a virtual representation of a physical asset, it can simulate the interaction of the diverse systems involved in the operation of its real-life counterpart and combine them with available sensor data. As such, a digital twin can accompany a vessel from its early stages of development, going then through the integration of additional systems, testing of new implementations, monitoring of the real vessel, and its maintenance.
The focus of this work is on displaying real-time information coming from Gunnerus for the purposes of vessel monitoring and decision support for safe navigation. To this effect, a backend implementation has been developed for interfacing with the real-time data stream coming from Gunnerus. This backend will then be used to provide processed data to the applications in charge of vessel monitoring and decision support for safe navigation. These applications will be implemented as a 3D visualization based on the Autoferry Gemini simulator, and a 2D electronic chart web application, both conveying information related to Gunnerus and the surrounding vessels. Furthermore, the 2D electronic chart will display information regarding the decision support for safe navigation. This decision support system will use real-time data in order to display parameters from automatic radar plotting aids related to nearby vessels. Additionally, a safe trajectory based on control barrier functions will be displayed in the same chart as a suggestion for safe navigation for the officer on watch.
The capabilities of the resulting framework for an online digital twin of Gunnerus will be demonstrated with examples based on real data collected through its development.