A Modular Underwater Simulation Framework for Ship Hull Inspection

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_75How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Ship hull inspection; Underwater simulation; Remotely operated vehicle; Gazebo Sim; ROS2

Abstract

Underwater inspection of ship hulls with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) is difficult and risky due to restricted access to hard-to-reach areas, low visibility, and the high cost of field trials. To avoid conducting costly experiments, this paper presents a modular underwater simulation framework developed using ROS 2 Jazzy Jalisco and Gazebo Harmonic to support the development and evaluation of hull inspection systems. The presented framework integrates vehicle dynamics, hydrodynamics effects, realistic sensor and actuator modelling, state estimation, path planning, guidance laws, and closed-loop control into a single structure. The robot is modelled as a Simulation Description Format (SDF) model and is equipped with various sensor and actuator models, including an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), a Doppler Velocity Logger (DVL), a pressure sensor (PS), and an altimeter, for state estimation. For actuation, the T200 thruster model is used with the Gazebo thruster plugin. The measurements from these sensors are fused using ROS 2’s robot_localization package to provide realistic state feedback. The framework was evaluated using a vertical lawnmower coverage pattern, and simulated camera and sonar sensors are used for hull inspection tasks. The experiments demonstrate the stability of sensor-in-the-loop operation and imply that the framework may be applied to other underwater inspection situations. The framework could also be extended to include more complex inspection tasks and a broader range of underwater vehicles.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Kishor Kumar Das
AU  - Rishabh Pratap Singh
AU  - Prabhat Thakur
AU  - Jagadeesh Kadiyam
AU  - Santakumar Mohan
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/08/31
TI  - A Modular Underwater Simulation Framework for Ship Hull Inspection
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Design, Manufacturing, and Sustainable Energy Systems (ICADMSES 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1049
EP  - 1060
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_75
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-750-7_75
ID  - Das2026
ER  -