Underwater Multi-Robot Simulation and Motion Planning in Angler

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extension to the Angler simulation framework that enables realistic multi-robot underwater simulation and motion planning, facilitating development and benchmarking in dynamic environments.

Contribution

It presents a modular extension to Angler supporting multi-robot simulation, integrated with ROS 2, OMPL, and collision avoidance tools, which was previously lacking.

Findings

Supports multiple robots simultaneously in simulation.

Integrates with OMPL for motion planning.

Enables development and benchmarking in dynamic underwater environments.

Abstract

Deploying multi-robot systems in underwater environments is expensive and lengthy; testing algorithms and software in simulation improves development by decoupling software and hardware. However, this requires a simulation framework that closely resembles the real-world. Angler is an open-source framework that simulates low-level communication protocols for an onboard autopilot, such as ArduSub, providing a framework that is close to reality, but unfortunately lacking support for simulating multiple robots. We present an extension to Angler that supports multi-robot simulation and motion planning. Our extension has a modular architecture that creates non-conflicting communication channels between Gazebo, ArduSub Software-in-the-Loop (SITL), and MAVROS to operate multiple robots simultaneously in the same environment. Our multi-robot motion planning module interfaces with cascaded controllers via a JointTrajectory controller in ROS~2. We also provide an integration with the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL), a collision avoidance module, and tools for procedural environment generation. Our work enables the development and benchmarking of underwater multi-robot motion planning in dynamic environments.