Surf Zone Simulation for Autonomous Amphibious Vehicles

Advances in domain modeling have come a long way, however, physics-based simulations capable of multi-domain, complex environments such as surf zones with breaking waves, currents, bathymetry/terrain and surf/shore obstacles, for assessing amphibious vehicle transitions from water to shore, do not exist. Addressing this limitation, Dynamic Dimension Technologies (DDT), proposes extending our VxSIM interactive synthetic, digital twin environment to accurately represent the multi-domain states which influences amphibious vehicle motions.  Based on lessons learned from over fifteen years of developing M&S for autonomous ground vehicle testing, DDT's VxSIM's novel open architecture simulation framework embraces naturalistic multi-domain environments required for amphibious autonomy systems evaluations. This proposal describes the research work to date and the plans for this Sequential Phase II effort.  DDT will work with ONR and the University of Iowa’s wave basin facility research team to complete design, development, test, and demonstration of the initial release of the VxSIM virtual exercise framework and digital twin configuration.  DDT will deploy and demonstrate VxSIM with real-time interface between live vehicle testing and autonomy control, such that VxSim receives position and speed updates of the vehicle, generates virtual obstacles in the water and on land, and runs vehicle autonomy to determine thrust and steering commands, which gets passed back to vehicle.  This provides the Navy and Marine Corps a live-virtual, digital twin “sandbox” testbed enabling simulation of autonomous amphibious vehicle performance in the surf zone.