Symbiotic Sensor Networks in Complex Underwater Terrains: A Simulation Framework

This paper presents a new multi-agent physics-based simulation framework (DISCOVERY), supporting experiments with self-organizing underwater sensor and actuator networks. DISCOVERY models mobile autonomous underwater vehicles, distributed sensor and actuator nodes, as well as multi-agent data-to-decision integration. The simulator is a real-time system using a discrete action model, fractal-based terrain modelling, with 3D visualization and an evaluation mode, allowing to compute various objective functions and metrics. The quantitative measures of multi-agent dynamics can be used as a feedback for evolving the agent behaviors. An evaluation of a simple simulated scenario with a heterogeneous team is also described.