Simulation environment for the design and test of the distributed controller for an autonomous underwater vehicle

The real-time simulation environment is developed for the design and test of the distributed controller for the TESTBED autonomous underwater vehicle. The vehicle dynamics is real-timely simulated in an industrial control computer and all the motion sensors and actuators external to the distributed controller is modeled with proper interfaces, allowing complete pseudo-mission simulation and analysis in the lab environment. This environment is proved to be an effective tool that supports rapid diagnosis and correction of system faults.