ECA A9 AUV

Link to the eca_a9 repository here

Link to the documentation page

Chat on Discord

This repository contains the robot description and necessary launch files to simulate the ECA A9 autonomous underwater vehicle. This repository is complementary to the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Simulator (UUV Simulator), an open-source project extending the simulation capabilities of the robotics simulator Gazebo to underwater vehicles and environments. For installation and usage instructions, please refer to the documentation pages.

Purpose of the project

This software is a research prototype, originally developed for the EU ECSEL Project 662107 SWARMs.

The software is not ready for production use. However, the license conditions of the applicable Open Source licenses allow you to adapt the software to your needs. Before using it in a safety relevant setting, make sure that the software fulfills your requirements and adjust it according to any applicable safety standards (e.g. ISO 26262).

Requirements

To simulate the ECA A9 AUV, please refer to the UUV Simulator repository and follow the installation instructions of the package. Then you can clone this package in the src folder of you catkin workspace

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/uuvsimulator/eca_a9.git

and then build your catkin workspace

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make # or <catkin build>, if you are using catkin_tools

Example of usage

To run a demonstration with the vehicle with teleoperation, you can run a UUV simulator Gazebo scenario, such as

roslaunch uuv_gazebo_worlds ocean_waves.launch

and then

roslaunch eca_a9_gazebo start_demo_teleop.launch joy_id:=0

The teleoperation nodes are pre-configured per default for the XBox 360 controller.

Configuration of the Gazebo world

The simulation with the fin plugins have shown better results by configuring the Gazebo's .world file with the following parameters for the physics engine:

<physics name="default_physics" default="true" type="ode">
  <max_step_size>0.01</max_step_size>
  <real_time_factor>1</real_time_factor>
  <real_time_update_rate>100</real_time_update_rate>
  <ode>
    <solver>
      <type>quick</type>
      <iters>50</iters>
      <sor>1.2</sor>
    </solver>
  </ode>
</physics>

Check the Mangalia world file to see an example.

License

ECA A9 package is open-sourced under the Apache-2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.