What does an ice breaker do?

Imagine this: you are lying on your back in a cabin onboard a ship. It is the middle of the night, and you are trying to sleep, but a constant crunching and squeaking sound keeps you awake.

Your bed and everything else in your cabin shakes as the ship breaks steadily through thick sheets of ice. The ship, a 40-year-old ice breaker, doesn’t stop just because it’s in the middle of the night.

Welcome to design research in the field.

In the EU research project SEDNA we explore how to use Augmented Reality (AR) for ship navigation in the Arctic. Our goal is to develop principles and guidelines for how AR can be used on the bridge.

We cannot do this from our office chairs, so we have participated in two field trips during the past year in order to get to know the bridge environment, the users and their tasks, as well as the challenges of navigating a ship through ice. One of these trips took place onboard the ice breaker ship Atle in the Gulf of Bothnia, between Sweden and Finland.

So, what does an ice breaker do?

We spent four days onboard the ship, and got to experience a range of different situations. Here are some of the scenarios we observed, and challenges that demonstrate the need for design interventions, with or without the use of AR.

Many cargo vessels are not equipped for navigation in ice, but still have to go through icy areas. In addition, ice conditions change quickly, and it is not uncommon that a vessel gets stuck in ice.

One of the situations we observed:

Challenges during this scenario:

If the ice conditions are rough, there is no point for a regular vessel to even try to go through the icy area on its own. Being escorted by an ice breaker also provides safety if the conditions change during the journey. Sometimes the ice breaker escorts several vessels in a convoy, but we did not get to experience this during our field study.

The escort operation might start with a rescue as described above, but it can also start from open waters or a harbour. During the escort, the ice breaker decides on the speed and distance between the two vessels.

Challenges during this scenario:

Ice breakers in Sweden are responsible for different geographical harbour areas. If a cargo vessel travels across these areas, the ice breakers might choose to “hand over” a vessel from one ice breaker to another.

We observed a situation in which two ice breakers were both escorting a vessel, and “swapped” vessels during a complex, yet elegant manoeuvre:

One of the ice breakers and its escorted vessel had to diverge from the main channel, since there is not enough space in the channels for vessels to pass each other. As soon as both cargo ships had a clear channel ahead, the ice breakers turned around and speeded up in order to get in front of their “new” cargo ships.

Challenges during this scenario:

The scenarios above provide just a few examples of what an ice beaker does. Other scenarios include transit in ice, operation planning, convoy, helicopter or drone operations, and search & rescue.

Field trips allow designers to get a unique, first-hand insight into users and their working environment without going through the filters of third-party stakeholders. This is essential. The insight we get is invaluable for our further work, and we now have a solid foundation for design explorations.

By using Augmented Reality it is possible to adapt the tools and information available for users according to specific situations. However, it is not at all given how this should be done.

Do you have any ideas for how to use AR in arctic navigation?

Do you want to learn more about the field trip? Download the full report and presentation below:

A special thanks to the Atle crew for allowing us to visit, observe and ask lots of questions!

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 723526)

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