Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation System of UUV Obstacle Avoidance Based on Binocular Vision

The sea trials for the obstacle avoidance research of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) are expensive and high-risk. To facilitate the research of automatic obstacle avoidance of an UUV in laboratory, a hardware- in-the-loop simulation system of UUV obstacle avoidance has been developed based on binocular vision, where the multi-degree of freedom test platform is used to simulate the motion of the UUV, and the double-stereo vision system is used to simulate forward looking sonar. In this paper, the structure and data stream of the system are discussed. The key technologies for vision subsystem and the software scheme for UUV model subsystem are also described. Joint simula-tion tests were conducted by adopting rule-based obstacle avoidance approach. Experimental results show that the sys-tem has the advantages of simple structure and convenient application, and it can be used in demonstration, validation, and evaluation of obstacle avoidance path plan.