Rapid Development Method Of Autopilot Controller For Unmanned Surface Vehicles Based On ROS Hardware In Loop Simulation

With the increasing demand of ocean resources,Unmanned Surface Vehicle(USV)has become a hot topic both at home and abroad,and various theories of USV control system are gradually applied.However,the process from theory to application is faced with problems like the difficulty of building USV’s hardware and software platform,the low fidelity of simulation test,and the difficulty of conducting actual test,etc.In the field of engineering education and research,there is a lack of reliable and universal USV platform for the development and validation.To solve the above-mentioned problems,research on the rapid development method of USV’s autonomous navigation controller.Choose open source autopilot system Pixhawk as the control system of USV.Use entity USV’s motion model and environment disturbance model build the hardware in loop simulation platform based on ROS(Robot Operating System)for USV,which improve the physical fidelity and functional fidelity of USV simulation.Redevelop the PX4 firmware,realize designing USV’s control algorithm based on Simulink model,and generate the control algorithm program automatically.Build the real USV test platform based on Pixhawk,to provide navigation test verification for USV control algorithm design.Through the above design,realize the design of USV control algorithm and its code implementation,simulation verification and the final actual navigation verification carried out on the same controller software and hardware platform,which improve the efficiency of development,reduced transition between development phases.The research contents of this paper are as follows:Firstly,using Pixhawk autopilot and its supporting firmware PX4 as the hardware and software system of USV controller,build the USV test platform.Establish the USV test platform’s mathematical model by regression formula calculation,mooring test and maneuverability test.Secondly,analysis the environmental disturbance on USV include wind,wave and current.According to the motion model and environmental disturbance model of the entity USV,design the hardware in loop simulation system to combine Pixhawk and ROS.Realize USV’s motion control simulation which has the characteristic of three-dimensional visualization and hardware in loop.The system has a certain degree of physical fidelity and functional fidelity.Then,redevelop the PX4 firmware,using Pixhawk Pilot Support Package to realize designing USV’s control algorithm by Simulink model,and the embedded code of the USV controller is generated automatically.Present a rapid development method of autonomous navigation controller for USV,which uses Pixhawk autopilot reuse mode to design autonomous navigation control algorithm,generate automatic code,hardware in loop simulation and real ship test.Finally,in order to verify the effectiveness of the rapid development method and development platform,the path tracking controller based on line of sight guidance and proportional integral differential control is developed.The hardware in loop simulation and real ship lake test under multi environment conditions are carried out.The average deviation of lake test under non disturbance,low disturbance and high disturbance conditions is 0.24 m,0.44 m and 1.15 m respectively,which shows that the path tracking controller can maintain good control effect under different environment disturbance.Thus,the feasibility of the rapid development method and platform of autonomous navigation controller for USV proposed in this paper is proved,Plays an active role in improving the development efficiency of control algorithm and the iterative speed of test.