Modeling of Three-Dimensional Ocean Current Based on Ocean Current Big Data for Underwater Vehicles

This paper proposes a real-time and high-resolution current system for underwater vehicle simulation and testing based on global ocean current data. The goal was to address the issue of the existing systems for underwater vehicle simulation, whose tests cannot provide real-time and continuous current velocity data. Thus, a three-dimensional ocean current model (3D-OCM) was built for depths of 0~4000 m via the reconstruction of raw current data, fast-access information retrieval, and three-dimensional interpolation. The three interpolation algorithms’ data smoothness and computational times were contrasted. The three-dimensional spline and bilinear algorithm performed the best, taking about 22 milliseconds to acquire the current information anywhere underwater. The comparative analysis revealed that the constructed current system performed strongly in real time and had good velocity data consistency compared with the current data from the National Marine Data Center (NMDC). Furthermore, the running trajectories of the profiling float without interpolation and with three interpolations were contrasted, where the trajectories were more consistent between the three-dimensional spline and bilinear and the three-dimensional Newton and bilinear interpolations. The system can support various marine phenomena for the underwater vehicle’s hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation and testing, and it is meaningful and valuable for increasing the effectiveness of the underwater vehicle’s research and development.