Application and Exploration of an Open-Source Underwater Vehicle Simulation Platform in ROS Practical Teaching

To address the issue of limited experimental platform resources in Robot Operating System (ROS) courses, this paper proposes a comprehensive practical teaching system based on the open-source Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) Simulator platform. This system adopts a distributed practice model, allowing students to independently complete experiments on their personal computers, effectively overcoming hardware resource constraints and significantly increasing practice time and flexibility. The practical content covers core modules such as controlling, motion planning, and ORB-SLAM3 map construction, integrating the Gazebo simulation environment and ROS parameter server to achieve full-process training from algorithm design to system debugging. Through this system, students can deeply master core technologies in ROS development, including topic and service communication mechanisms, and Gazebo simulation environment setup. The proposed solution not only effectively alleviates the problem of limited experimental resources but also provides students with timely and convenient access to practice platforms. With appropriately challenging content, it significantly enhances students' engineering literacy and innovation capabilities, offering strong support for cultivating robotics engineering talent.