Hardware-in-the-loop testing of a maritime autonomous collision avoidance system

Real-time simulators are useful tools for the development and validation of complex systems such as naval ships, aircraft or land vehicles, requiring over time more rigorous testing and integration as these systems become more and more complex. Hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) is a well established technique used for a rapid and economical validation of both hardware and software sections of the developed architecture. This paper describes the design and execution of a hardware-in-the-loop simulator developed to test a maritime autonomous collision avoidance system (CAS) as well as some notable test cases to study the behaviour of the model. The HILS system is composed by a programmable logic controller (PLC) linked to two personal computers, one responsible for hosting the Linux system running the ROS Path Planner, the other for simulating the current scenario and the ship model.