An Underwater Autonomous Agent. From simulation to experimentation

The development of an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is a complex process that usually needs different sub-process like simulation, implementation and experimentation. Frequently these processes are disconnected among them and require rewriting the code increasing the probability of error. This paper presents an hybrid control architecture, named OOCAA, for an underwater agent. The OOCAA, Object Oriented Control Architecture for Autonomy, was designed as an object-oriented architecture that simplifies the interconnection of the different processes commented above. Simulation and real execution are interconnected through graphical applications allowing the use of the real code and real hardware of the robot to simulate a mission in the laboratory. Once the code is tested in the laboratory, real experiments can be done. The paper describes the overall OOCAA architecture, the reactive layer that has been already implemented and the tools used for simulation, implementation and experimentation. The control architecture is being implemented in the GARBI underwater robot.