Time Budget for Merchant Ship Control Takeover - Preliminary Results

The increasing automation of shipping requires a proper understanding of the behavior of those in command of ships to be able to correctly mimic and interpret their actions. This will be especially important during the widespread introduction of autonomous merchant vessels, whose decision-making algorithms will need to be correctly prepared to assess situational awareness and will allow for timely control takeover in a variety of circumstances, including mixed navigation conditions. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the safety-critical situations when the assistance of a captain is required by the watch officer. There can be various situations when such a person is called and asked to proceed to Bridge and exercise his/her experience to help the younger and less skilled colleague in a potentially dangerous situation. In the study, we asked experienced Masters Mariners about their perception of such a situation. We investigated whether it depends on their sea-time experience and other factors (e.g. traffic density, weather conditions, fatigue) in a particular situation on board the vessel. The results of this study may prove valuable in determining the time required for obtaining a situation awareness during control takeover in different situations. The collected results may also prove useful in designing and developing navigation simulator exercise scenarios in the context of assessing situational awareness or providing control-taking guidelines for Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS).