Seminar: Towards Virtual Environments to Support Maritime Robotics

Dr. Brian S. Bingham
Associate Professor
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department
Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA

Simulation plays an increasingly important role in the development and testing of robotic and autonomous systems. While simulation cannot replace field testing, it can provide a surrogate for both the robot and its operating environment, emulating the robot’s motion and sensor measurements to exercise the system software while reducing the required development cost and time.

For maritime applications the high cost of the robotic platforms, challenges associated with access to the operating environment and lack of control over environmental factors accentuate the importance of simulation in the development process. Simulation can provide a means to evaluate applications on complex, expensive ocean-going platforms early in the project, without the cost and risk associated with deploying such assets in the marine environment.

The goal of this project is to create a simulation capability for ocean robotics by leveraging Gazebo, an open-source simulation environment that has emerged as the de facto solution for robotics development. Extending Gazebo to ocean applications requires integrating vessel models, environmental influences (e.g., waves, wind and currents), sensor models and visualization capabilities to capture the salient aspects of robotic platforms operating in ocean environments while maintaining the ability to execute the simulation in real-time. The project includes new Gazebo-based international robotics competition in 2019, the Virtual RobotX (VRX) challenge, which is a part of the RobotX unmanned surface vessel competition.