Development of the Saemangeum Digital Test-Bed (K-URSim) for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

Abstract

This paper presents K-URSim (KRISO Underwater Robot Simulator), a ROS2-based modular simulation platform that serves as the backbone of the Saemangeum Digital Marine Testbed for unmanned marine systems (UMS). Unlike conventional simulators, K-URSim is tightly coupled with the real inshore test site, integrating in-situ ocean data such as currents, waves, and bathymetry into the simulation loop for realistic environment reproduction and data-driven validation. The platform adopts a modular architecture (KRISO Extensions) supporting vehicle modeling, physics-based dynamics, sensing, planning, control, and external interfaces within a unified ROS2 framework. By bridging simulation and real-world experiments, K-URSim enables pre-validation of control algorithms and mission scenarios prior to deployment, reducing cost and risk. It also supports reinforcement learning-based autonomy and synthetic data generation for sim-to-real transfer. The system can also integrate with NVIDIA Omniverse for digital--physical hybrid testing and sim-to-real validation.