  This article faces the problem of operative and procedural cooperative
training in marine ports with particular attention to harbour pilots and port
traffic controller. The design and development of an advanced system, equipped
with dedicated hardware in the loop, for cooperative training of operators
involved in the last mile of navigation is presented. Indeed, the article
describes the software and hardware development of a distributed and
interoperable system composed by two simulators (the bridge ship simulator and
control tower simulator). Multiple problems are faced and solved including (i)
the motion of the ship at sea that is based on a 6 Degree Of Freedom (DOF)
model for surge, sway and yaw and closed form expressions for pitch, roll and
heave and its validation; (ii) the development of the 3D geometric models and
related virtual environments of a real marine port and vessel (to provide the
trainees with the sensation to experience a real port and ship environment);
(iii) the design of a bridge ship replica, the bridge hardware integration and
the design of the visualization system; (iv) the design and development of the
control tower simulator; (v) the integration of the bridge ship simulator and
control tower simulator through the IEEE 1516 High Level Architecture standard
for distributed simulation.
