Serious Games and Marine Domain
Serious Games, we know, are powerful tools or better a powerful concept for training and education but why in Marine Domain? Because it is a very complex scenario, in particular for safety and security procedures, with several critical infrastructures that represent nodes of the complex global logistic system. Such infrastructures must be protected. But ports, ships, off-shore platforms or underwater pipes and cables are ruled by complex international laws and rules and moreover different kind of actors operate in: indeed there are military and police forces, private companies (such as terminal operators or cruise lines) and public agencies. Furthermore human operators work every day on board or in terminals performing difficult and often risky procedures.
So why not to use a serious game based approach to train and educate in the extended maritime domain?
Prof. Bruzzone’s research teams are working on serious games for safety and security procedures education with a focus on interoperability, Intelligent Agents and modeling and managing different Unmanned Autonomous Systems in the extended maritime framework (underwater, sea surface, coast, air, space and even cyberspace).
RAMSES (“ReliAble ship Management and Security Enhancement by Simulation based on Serious Games”) is a sample of this R&D activity: it is a multiplayer, systems-based Serious Games for training technical nautical operations and ship procedures:
- refueling at sea,
- man overboard,
- mooring to a buoy,
- UASs interoperability
- etc
Figure 1 samples of RAMSES scenarios
ST_VM (Simulation Team Virtual Marine) is another sample in which the simulation team’s researchers are currently testing scenarios with traditional assets such as boats, vessels, helicopters as well as vans and people are interacting dynamically with Autonomous Systems in the Extended Maritime Framework. In the current scenario UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are present both with fixed and rotary wing; these element are simulated as well as UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicles) and AUV(Autonomous Underwater Vehicle). Obviously the use of Intelligent Agents is fundamental to direct these elements and to populate the scenario with active entities.
Figure 2 samples of ST_VM game scenarios