Modeling and visualization of multiple autonomous heterogeneous vehicles

The paper presents a realistic simulation and visualization environment tool to be used as a test-bed for comparison and performance evaluation of different control and coordination strategies applied to single and teams of heterogeneous unmanned vehicles, including teams of cooperative aerial and ground vehicles. The system architecture utilizes MATLAB/SIMULINK models and leverages a computer network for setting up a distributed simulation environment with realistic visualization capabilities based on the Virtual Reality Modeling Language and standard middleware. To devise the architecture of the system, the paper surveys and analyzes different state of the art technologies before arriving at a practical implementation.