A Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation Platform for Development of AUV Control Systems

An AUV simulation platform is an essential and indispensable tool for the development of AUV control systems. This paper presents a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation platform, mainly consisting of an AUV host computer and a simulation server, to facilitate the design of control algorithms for a new AUV developed by the Institute of Undersea Technology (IUT). The thruster commands, generated from the AUV host computer, and the simulated sensor data, generated from the simulation server, have the same formats as those of the real thrusters and sensors to be installed on the new IUT-AUV II. Simulations for two types of hybrid control, i.e. the depth-heading control and the altitude-heading control, were carried out to validate the functionality of the HIL simulation platform. Based on the observations at runtime, once the HIL simulation platform is activated, thruster commands and sensor data will migrate between the AUV host computer and the simulation server. The AUV motion data can be displayed and saved through the GUI at runtime. The saved AUV motion data can be used to modify the AUV control algorithms under development. Simulation results and runtime observations imply that the presented HIL simulation platform could be an effective platform for the development of AUV control systems.