An Underwater Vehicle Simulator with Immersive Interface using X3D and HLA

Abstract

Training war fighters how to maneuver a submarine is very important, but the use of real submarines in such training is expensive and hindered by regional and temporal limitations. Modeling and simulation (M&S) can be a good alternative to costly training. However, the use of existing M&S for submarines has limitations. For instance, the commercial software and hardware need to be kept in a secure place. Depending on the location of the protected software, war fighters may travel far and take a considerable amount of time to get to these places. Long-distance travel also means they have a limited amount of time to train on the M&S machines. Furthermore, many types of M&S have only a one-channel display system, which reduces immersiveness. Another problem is that few heterogeneous simulators can be used as an integrated system. One solution to these problems involves the use of extensible 3D (X3D) graphics, a platform-independent and open standard graphic file format, which can be used with general purpose PCs. The immersiveness is increased by means of a multichannel display system and a motion chair. Finally, the individual components of a simulator can be integrated with the high level architecture and run time infrastructure (HLA/RTI). We demonstrate the proposed method through experiments with an underwater vehicle simulator.