NetMarSyS - A Tool for the Simulation and Visualization of Distributed Autonomous Marine Robotic Systems

The past few years have seen a steady rise of public interest in ocean science and technology as evident through the United Nations proclaiming the coming decade as the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. To appropriately address this challenge, it is essential to possess the right set of information dissemination tools. In this paper, we present a steady effort towards one such tool, called the Networked Marine Systems Simulator or NetMarSyS. Here, we describe a platform to model and visualize the behaviour of marine vehicles in three-dimensional space for surface and subsurface applications. The simulator is suitable for a wide range of applications, from a single-vehicle lawnmower survey to a complex multi-vehicle cooperative mission scenario. We use Robot Operating System, Unity3D game engine and WebSocket server technology to create a distributed multi-agent networked system where in multi-vehicle simulation is carried out. This allow us to support Hardware-in-the-Loop, Software-in-the-Loop simulations and real-time mission visualization. We highlight the competence of the visualizing software using an reference underwater-docking mission comprising of 2 vehicles, and one underwater structure.