Simulation Environment for Underwater Vehicles Testing and Training in Unity3D

Design and operation of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) are relatively new topics, and building a functional one often requires an iterative approach. Because of the risk of damaging costly hardware, the limited availability of infrastructure suitable for testing AUVs, and the significant time investment required, it is often impractical to conduct thorough live experiments for every incremental change. In this paper, the benefits of using a simulated environment for running software tests, training neural networks, and testing the AUV's performance in arbitrary scenarios are explored. By utilizing Unity3D, a cross-platform game engine, a customized framework was developed, allowing for setting up environments for simulating various aspects of underwater operation such as buoyancy and caustics. This framework supports communication with AUV systems (collecting observations through simulated sensors and controlling simulated actuators), gathering datasets for offline training, and randomizing parts of the environment to test the system's robustness.