Relative Motion Consulting

Enhancing Knowledge Flow with Extended Reality

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Jon Brewster Ph.D. CDR USN (Ret.) with James Kilby ADM USN

Jon Brewster, Ph.D. Dissertation, December 2025

Abstract. Tacit knowledge—embodied, situational, and difficult to articulate—plays a critical role in U.S. Navy bridge operations, yet it remains challenging to transfer through resource-limited mockup training. This dissertation evaluated whether extended reality (XR) could support tacit knowledge flow by comparing XR-based team training to the Navy’s Navigation, Seamanship, and Shiphandling Trainer (NSST). Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research Tech Solutions and executed by Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific, this study compared more than 17,000 data points taken from 28 bridge teams (158 participants) who completed matched scenarios in both XR and the NSST. A within-subjects design supported over 300 statistical tests, including Wilcoxon and Mann-Whitney analyses, Hotelling’s T², Cohen’s d effect sizes, order effects, subgroup analyses, principal component analysis, sentiment analyses, and distributional fitting. Across the NASA Task Load Index, System Usability Scale, and Bridge-Watch Self-Assessment results supported three of four hypotheses, showing XR produced workload, usability, and readiness outcomes comparable to the NSST. Research findings demonstrated XR is a viable, portable, always-available training solution usable from any location at any time and also advances Knowledge Flow Theory toward future investigations into “Cognition in the Virtual,” a new conceptual framework for tacit knowledge flow via synthetic experience across mixed reality environments.

Actual ship's bridge versus physical simulatorPhysical simulator versus virtual environmentHybrid team in physical simulator and virtual XR headsets

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Don Brutzman

Don Brutzman is a computer scientist and career submarine officer, now retired as an Associate Professor from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey California. His development efforts include applying open standards for Web-based visualization using Extensible 3D (X3D) graphics, underwater robotics, implementing robotic data strategies, Network-Optional Warfare (NOW), Ethical Control of Unmanned Systems, and distributed simulation. His research interests include real-time interactive 3D computer graphics, underwater robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and distributed networking for large-scale virtual environments.