This research leverages Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) to create a low cost, flexible test asset that drastically reduces the resources necessary to create high-fidelity simulations of real maritime vessel motion. Current techniques for modeling vessel motion are quite complex and require sophisticated physical representations of the vessel and the environmental conditions, which is very resource-intensive and narrow in scope. Combined with an existing motion platform, UE5 provides a method that can reduce the time and cost to generate realistic motion simulations. Because the UE5 environment is virtual, it can be adjusted to simulate numerous environments and vessels and can export the motion data for use on a real-world test asset. The test asset of interest is a portable Stewart motion base that provides high fidelity, simulated vessel motion for a variety of US DoD programs, including ordnance & weapon testing, electro-optic/infrared (EO/IR) stabilization testing, and target tracking algorithm development, amongst others. Increased access to this kind of high-fidelity simulation would benefit military programs with early developmental testing requirements and low technology readiness level (TRL) technologies that may be too high risk for full-up tests. The primary technical challenge of this effort is correlating UE5 wave simulations with realistic at-sea motion of a vessel. Once this relationship is established, the next step is to model additional vessels to ensure the virtual wave model is robust. Next, vessels are simulated in the UE5 wave environment to generate six-degree-of-freedom motion profiles that can be replayed on the motion platform system. In this way, any vessel motion modeled in UE5 can be converted into real-world motion rapidly, and a library of profiles can be generated at very low cost. The output of this effort can be compared to the traditional full hydrodynamic simulations and datasets collected at sea to evaluate the level of correlation to the real world.
Keywords
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, EVALUATION, M&S, MODELING, PEDAGOGICAL DESIGN, PHYSICAL MODELLING SYNTHESIS, SIMULATIONS, SIMULATORS
Additional Keywords
Weapon Systems