A Simulation Environment for Testing and Evaluating Multiple Cooperating Solar-powered AUVs

This paper describes the joining of an Autonomous Undersea Vehicle (AUV) with a pre-existing distributed simulation environment. Together, they provide the capability to test and evaluate Solar-powered AUV (SAUV) system components and multiple cooperative vehicle mission profiles before going in the water. This simulation facility allows for complete testing of SAUV onboard high-level software, including underwater networking protocol logic. The facility also has a training functionality in that top level mission planning and vehicle monitoring applications used by SAUV operators can also be tested as if they were in a field setting. Hardware components, such as radio frequency (RF) modems (typically connected to the vehicle monitoring application) as well as acoustic modems can also be tested within a systems context. The SAUV PC-104 system, running a Linux OS and the high-level software, can be tested as a bench-level component. In addition, significant portions of the standalone SAUV vehicle can be put into simulation mode, thereby allowing test of other on-board vehicle electronics and subsystems