Simulator Development For Multiple Unmanned Underwater Vessels

This paper is about the development of a system that will simulate the operation of multiple Unmanned Underwater Vessels (UUV’s). The simulator is being designed to support the research efforts of the Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) team of the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), located at Stennis Space Center. In this paper, we will discuss the functionality and architecture of a simulator that will support this research. Our approach is to use a network of PC’s with a vessel simulation running on each PC. An additional PC will host our Central Simulation Processes that will display simulation progress and serve as a central control for shared data and communications. This calls for the ability to create a flexible distributed real-time system that can synchronize vessel interaction in a team setting. Various combinations of simulated and physical vessel types must be allowed to support the different team member roles and our phased development approach. We present a detailed description of the architecture proposed for our simulator and discuss its operation. Finally, we will present our observation of the performance of a prototype implementation and discuss our future plans for development and testing.