Towards an investigation of a MASS-assisted anti-grounding service through simulated nautical scenarios in a ship handling simulator

Vessel groundings pose a major risk for maritime safety, constituting 20 percent of all incidents in the last decade. Frequent dredging and bottom mapping are resource intensive solutions currently employed, but these services cannot be maintained with the necessary frequency in all critical areas. While ships are carrying echo sounders to acquire precise and current under keel clearance data, it does not allow the vessel to react to possible deviations from the map data. Within the RoboVaaS project, a service is designed, implemented and tested in simulation. This service consists of one or more small MASS travelling ahead of a merchant vessel, collecting bathymetric data with enough lead time for the merchant vessel to react to possible threats, e.g. by course correction. This service is tested in compliance with the IMO HCD guideline in a quick approach and safe environment using a ship handling simulator. The simulator is augmented by a display system based on an ECDIS map and displaying the bathymetric data in three different scenarios. These scenarios are tested with nautical officers to collect feedback for service design and implementation with trained personnel and show the effectiveness of the chosen human machine interface.