An Interactive Virtual Simulator for Motion Analysis of Underwater Gliders

Autonomous Underwater Gliders (AUG) have become a very useful and cheap tool to sample the ocean’s environment compared with oceanographic ships to perform the same task. AUGs can glide along the ocean up to a specific depth thanks to their aerodynamic shape, wings and rudders, and a buoyancy-driven system composed of a bladder and an eccentric movable mass that modifies the net buoyancy and the pitch/roll angles of the vehicle, respectively. One of the main concerns of glider’s pilots is to understand and/or predict the behaviour of the glider when it is affected by ocean currents under the water. In this paper, an interactive virtual simulator for motion analysis of underwater gliders is given. The simulator considers the online solution of the full nonlinear hydrodynamics of a well-known glider. The virtual simulator is a tool that will help technicians and pilots to increase their training process, to carry out performance analysis of new control schemes and validation of new glider’s models before the physical construction.