Towards the use of collaborative virtual environments to crew unmanned oil platforms

This paper presents a human-centered vision of unmanned but crewed platforms, combining an onshore collaborative hybrid environment and an intelligent offshore oilfield. Computer science plays a major role in this vision since digital environments are paramount for the job. We discuss the importance of research in the fields of computer graphics, virtual reality and computer supported cooperative work in this context and present the basic technologies needed to accomplish the task. We instantiate our vision appointing the results of some initial experiments using virtual reality in submarine installation operations.