Hardware in the Loop Simulation Benchmark for Autonomous Marine Vehicles

Abstract

The use of autonomous vehicles is becoming ubiquitous due to the versatility and flexibility that they display in the execution of individual and cooperative task, coupled with the fact that their use avoids placing human lives at risk. Closely related to these autonomous systems are the simulation tools. These tools are essential to test the correct design and behaviour of the modelling and control algorithms theoretically. A poor design could have dramatic consequences to the vehicle itself, the rest of vehicles and even the environment in a real scenario. In this work a benchmark for unmanned vehicles is presented. The main objective is to have a generic framework in which to develop and test control algorithms for coordinated and cooperative tasks between different kinds of vehicles. The tool is constructed in a modular way, so as any kind of vehicle can be simulated (or tested) with a slight modification of the program. The benchmark can run continuous and discrete (DEVS and non-DEVS) simulations and it is constructed over LabVIEW as Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) simulation platform. Using the same system for simulation and real experiments reduces the cost of hardware tests and facilitates enormously the portability of the theoretical design to the real world. This tool is oriented both for researchers and students, to test their own control algorithms both theoretically and experimentally.