DynaMechs: An Object Oriented Software Package for E cient Dynamic Simulation of Underwater Robotic Vehiclesy

In this chapter, a real-time, graphical simulation system, called DynaMechs, for underwater robotic vehicle (URV) systems is presented. An eecient dynamic simulation algorithm is developed based on an eecient O(N) robot dynamics algorithm where N is the number of links in the system. It has been extended to include the eeects of various hydrodynamic forces that are exerted on these systems in underwater environments including added mass, viscous drag, uid acceleration, and buoyancy forces. Very eecient implementation of the simulation algorithm is achieved through the use of object oriented design (OOD) techniques. This chapter describes the software package, written in C++, that results which is capable of simulating a large class of tree-structured mechanisms having star topologies which include multiple manipulator systems and multilegged vehicles.