ASVSim (AirSim for Surface Vehicles): A High-Fidelity Simulation Framework for Autonomous Surface Vehicle Research
This provides a simulation platform for researchers and engineers in autonomous shipping, particularly for inland and port environments, though it is incremental as it builds upon existing simulation tools.
The authors tackled the lack of open-source, high-fidelity simulation tools for autonomous surface vehicles (USVs) by introducing ASVSim, an open-source framework that combines vessel dynamics with marine sensor simulations and supports synthetic dataset generation for training models.
The transport industry has recently shown significant interest in unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), specifically for port and inland waterway transport. These systems can improve operational efficiency and safety, which is especially relevant in the European Union, where initiatives such as the Green Deal are driving a shift towards increased use of inland waterways. At the same time, a shortage of qualified personnel is accelerating the adoption of autonomous solutions. However, there is a notable lack of open-source, high-fidelity simulation frameworks and datasets for developing and evaluating such solutions. To address these challenges, we introduce AirSim For Surface Vehicles (ASVSim), an open-source simulation framework specifically designed for autonomous shipping research in inland and port environments. The framework combines simulated vessel dynamics with marine sensor simulation capabilities, including radar and camera systems and supports the generation of synthetic datasets for training computer vision models and reinforcement learning agents. Built upon Cosys-AirSim, ASVSim provides a comprehensive platform for developing autonomous navigation algorithms and generating synthetic datasets. The simulator supports research of both traditional control methods and deep learning-based approaches. Through limited experiments, we demonstrate the potential of the simulator in these research areas. ASVSim is provided as an open-source project under the MIT license, making autonomous navigation research accessible to a larger part of the ocean engineering community.