A Virtual Online Simulator Design for the Docking of Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

In this paper, a virtual online simulator is designed for the docking simulation task of Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV), which provides an economic way to evaluate the reliability of related algorithms before the real underwater test. The host and lower computers are selected with several units' design to send and receive the data via TCP/IP communication in the virtual online simulator. The host computer runs the simulink control program, which calculates the mathematical model, monitors the state of UUV, and simulates or interacts with the real sensor during the docking process. The host computer runs the unity simulation software, which obtains the data from the lower computer, and implements the navigation and control of the UUV. The virtual docking scene is designed to display the simulation of UUV on the screen, and four different navigation modes are designed to implement the experiment with motion verification and underwater docking for the UUV. The experiment results show that the designed virtual online simulator can achieve the simulation of docking task in a lower cost.