USV (VRX)

Repo: pantelis/usv-vrx-2022 Environment: ros.dev.gpu Status: External repo, awaiting platform integration Upstream: osrf/vrx (VRX 2023 competition) Epic: AURA-698 Design doc: Marine World Model for USV Navigation

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Overview

Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) reference application targeting the Virtual RobotX competition. ROS 2 + Gazebo Harmonic simulation of the WAM-V platform on the Sydney Regatta course, with controllers for the standard VRX tasks (station keeping, wayfinding, perception, navigation). Serves as the maritime counterpart to TurtleBot Maze (ground) and AR4 Physical-AI (manipulation) on the user plane.

Architecture

• Simulator: Gazebo Harmonic via upstream vrx and ros_gz, WAM-V URDF with thruster + sensor plugins, wind/wave/current environmental forcing
• Controller stack: ROS 2 nodes in my_usv_components/ — inverse-kinematics thruster allocation, station-keeping PID, wayfinding goal tracker
• Sensing: GPS + IMU + camera + LiDAR fusion for localization and perception (per VRX 2023 task descriptions)
• References: SINGABOAT-VRX motion control, artificial potential field path-keeping for USVs

VRX tasks covered

Platform services

• User plane: Gazebo + ROS 2 stack runs on ros.dev.gpu as Ray workers; long-running sim sessions as Ray actors
• Data plane: ROS bag recordings and Rerun (.rrd) traces of sim runs stored in warehouse/, surfaced via R2 for the Rerun web viewer
• Control plane: ClusterAgent monitors ros.dev.gpu; NotebookAgent submits training/eval jobs for perception models against bag-replay datasets

Integration plan

1. Move repo under aegean-ai/ org and add to applications table in the index
2. Devcontainer alignment with ros.dev.gpu (ROS 2 Jazzy + Gazebo Harmonic) — current repo targets an earlier ROS 2 + Gazebo combo
3. Wire bag recording → lakehouse landing tier; Rerun visualization for trajectory + thruster commands
4. Add VRX perception task (buoy detection) as a Counter-UAS-style training pipeline on torch.dev.gpu

References

• VRX 2023 Task Descriptions
• VRX 2023 Technical Guide
• Theory of Operation
• Path-Keeping Algorithm for USVs Based on Artificial Potential Field
• SINGABOAT-VRX (motion control reference)