Enhanced Real-Time Simulation of ROV Attitude and Trajectory Under Ocean Current and Wake Disturbances

This study focuses on the remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) and addresses key issues in existing simulation systems, such as neglecting the influence of ocean currents on the ROV’s trajectory or only simulating the impact of ocean currents instead of combining wake flow and ocean currents. Additionally, the visualization capabilities of current simulation systems still have room for improvement. This paper develops a three-dimensional path simulation system for ocean inspection robots to tackle these challenges based on MATLAB and Simulink. The system optimizes the drag matrix of the original simulation model by decomposing the sea current into three directional components in three-dimensional space and simulating the relative velocity in each direction separately; it introduces the influence of the current wake, thus more accurately realizing the trajectory simulation of the ROV under the current perturbation. Experimental results demonstrate high consistency between the optimized model’s simulation outcomes and theoretical expectations. The proposed system significantly improves trajectory evolution stability and consistency, compared to traditional models. The findings of this study indicate that the proposed optimized simulation system not only effectively verifies the applicability of control algorithms but also provides reliable data support for ROV design and optimization. Additionally, it lays a solid foundation for further developing intelligent underwater robots based on Internet of Things (IoT) technology.