Refereed article in conference proceedings (A4)
The use of metaverse in maritime sector – a combination of social communication, hands on experiencing and digital twins
List of Authors: Luimula Mika, Haavisto Timo, Vu Duy, Markopoulos Panagiotis, Aho Jami, Markopoulos Evangelos, Saarinen Juha
Conference name: AHFE International Conference on Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Publication year: 2022
Journal: AHFE International: Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics International
Book title *: Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Proceedings of the 13th AHFE International Conference on Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, New York, USA July 24-28, 2022
Title of series: AHFE International
Volume number: 31
Start page: 115
End page: 123
ISBN: 978-1-958651-07-0
eISSN: 2771-0718
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1001513
COVID-19 has caused challenges in traveling and sales activities while teleconferencing is at the moment the main communication tool in industry. Various technology giants such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Epic Games have published their visions for remote presence. In February 2021, also Turku University of Applied Sciences started the development of its own metaverse technology. In this paper, we will introduce this technology and its main features to enable social communication, hands on experiencing and digital twin integration. The whole development process has been split in three phases: preliminary study to find the most promising combination of hardware and software tools, prototyping study to create the first version in various test and generate cycles, and finally piloting study to find out how this technology can be utilized in one chosen domain namely in maritime sector. As a result, we have been able to develop a robust technology which can be used as a virtual reality social platform combined with functionalities to enable hands on experiencing and IoT integration.