Integrated Simulation of Virtual Prototypes and Control Algorithms of Unmanned Surface Vehicles Based on a Robot Operating System

Unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) require autonomous software with a high level of liberalization and automation to complete various missions. Therefore, experimental verification and validation of this software at the initial design stage are essential. However, such experiments are impossible before the actual hardware is developed, and the creation of an external environment for the mission requires substantial cost and time. In this study, virtual prototypes of the mission environment and hardware for the USV are developed. Then, a simulation environment for testing the control algorithms in the autonomous software is constructed. Data communication with the USV hardware is necessary for the autonomous software to acquire information from the sensors and to operate the actuators. Similarly, data communication between the programs of the virtual prototypes and the autonomous software is required for the integrated simulation environment. In this study, the robot operating system (ROS) software platform is adopted to construct the interface for this data communication. Finally, the integrated simulation environment of the control algorithms and the virtual prototypes are constructed based on ROS to verify the autonomous software of the USV. The applicability of the suggested simulation environment is evaluated by application to three scenarios: mine detection, path following, and port entry.