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My involvement with Orpheus, QinetiQ's operator guidance system for ships falls into two stages.
Stage 1
Initially I was asked to design the user interface under guidance from the system creators. This involved programmatic, ergonomic and visual design, the combination of existing technology together with specialist emerging understanding followed by rigorous testing and evaluation.
This stage furthered my knowledge of programming, mathematics, hardware integration issues, ergonomic design and sea keeping. It also provided insight into how to make software more useable to a wide audience of varied experience and knowledge.
The system was installed and tested on the bridge of 3 Type 23 frigates. I visited the ships and collated feedback from the users and the programs data archive. During these visits the relationship I developed with the users meant it became apparent that the main focus of Orpheus on guidance through rough seas in order to increase habitability was, due to the large size of these frigates, not as important as guidance required during operations such as sonar deployment or helicopter takeoff/landing.
Stage 2
Based on the above findings, the second stage of my involvement began when I redesigned the interface and derived the methodology to provide guidance for helicopter operations. My task included interviewing ships staff, attending embarked aviation conferences with questionnaires and chairing meetings with technical experts and users to define the exact requirements.
This allowed the development of a user interface that showed all the required information and applied appropriate theoretical and practical methods to derive a methodology which analysed incoming ship motion and wind data, compared it to a set of defined envelopes and therefore calculated limits for both the current and all possible ship headings and speeds.
Following ship visits to update the system and brief the staff on its use feedback has been positive and the system has been used for a number of helicopter operations.
Overall, this project developed my ability to assess criteria and requirements and create a relevant innovative solution, interview and discuss schemes with current and potential users taking into account feedback from previous versions and integrating these ideas. It furthered my experience with developing a methodology and an interface that mathematically, programmatically and ergonomically satisfies all requirements. |
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