About

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Welcome to the website of UWSim, an UnderWater Simulator for marine robotics research and development. UWSim started with the RAUVI and TRIDENT research projects as a tool for testing and integrating perception and control algorithms before running them on the real robots.

UWSim visualizes an underwater virtual scenario that can be configured using standard 3D modeling software (such as Blender, 3D Studio Max, etc.). Controllable underwater vehicles, surface vessels and robotic manipulators, as well as simulated sensors, can be added to the scene and accessed externally through network interfaces.

The software has been implemented in C++ and makes use of the OpenSceneGraph (OSG) and osgOcean libraries. OSG is an open source 3D graphics application programming interface used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization and modeling. The toolkit is written in standard C++ using OpenGL and runs on a variety of operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, IRIX, Solaris and FreeBSD. On the other hand, osgOcean is another open source project that implements realistic underwater rendering using OSG. osgOcean was developed as part of an EU funded research initiative called the VENUS project. UWSim uses the above mentioned libraries and adds further functionality for easily adding underwater robots to the scene, simulate sensors, and do the interface with external control programs.

UWSim has been designed with the following main goals in mind:

  • To be easily integrable with existing control architectures. Control algorithms are external to the simulator that in many cases just works as a visualization of the output computed by external algorithms.
  • To be general and easily extendible. Abstract interfaces are provided for adding new vehicles, manipulators, etc. Support for widgets is also provided.
  • To include support for underwater manipulators, thus allowing simulating underwater intervention missions. Kinematic chains can be created and controlled.
  • To be visually realistic, and to allow the configuration of several parameters such as water color, visibility, floating particles, etc.  

This software is being mainly developed by researchers at the IRSLab (Jaume-I University, Castellón).