SMaRCSim: Maritime Robotics Simulation Modules

Abstract

Developing new functionality for underwater robots and testing them in the real world is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Simulation environments allow for rapid testing before field deployment. However, existing tools lack certain functionality for use cases in our project: i) developing learning-based methods for underwater vehicles; ii) creating teams of autonomous underwater, surface, and aerial vehicles; iii) integrating the simulation with mission planning for field experiments. A holistic solution to these problems presents great potential for bringing novel functionality into the underwater domain. In this paper we present SMaRCSim, a set of simulation packages that we have developed to help us address these issues.