The DAVE multibeam sonar plugin, adapted for ROS 2 Jazzy and Gazebo Harmonic, uses a ray-based multibeam model that simulates phase, reverberation, and speckle noise through a point scattering approach. It generates realistic intensity-range (A-plot) data while accounting for time and angular ambiguities as well as speckle noise.

Key Features

• Physical sonar beam/ray calculation with the point scattering model
  • Generating intensity-range (A-plot) raw sonar data
  • Publishes the data with UW APL’s sonar image msg format
• NVIDIA CUDA core GPU parallelization

Below is a diagram showing how the plugin is structured and how CUDA is utilized to perform the sonar calculations.

Original Research paper

• Choi, W., Olson, D., Davis, D., Zhang, M., Racson, A., Bingham, B. S., … & Herman, J. Physics-based modelling and simulation of Multibeam Echosounder perception for Autonomous Underwater Manipulation. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 279. 10.3389/frobt.2021.706646

Original DAVE Wiki

• DAVE Wiki: https://field-robotics-lab.github.io/dave.doc/contents/dave_sensors/Multibeam-Forward-Looking-Sonar/

Getting started

The plugin uses CUDA to accelerate the sonar calculations.

To install the required system dependencies, follow the instructions below:

• Native Local Installation Manual : Native Local Installation Manual
• Docker Installation Manual : Docker Installation Manual

The folder is divided into three parts: the Demo, the Gazebo Plugin, and the Gazebo System, which must be included in the world file for the plugin to function correctly.

dave_gz_multibeam_sonar/
├── multibeam_sonar -- Gazebo Plugin files (Sonar calculations)
├── multibeam_sonar_demo -- Demo files (launch, scripts, rviz)
├── multibeam_sonar_system -- Gazebo System files
└── README.md

Running demos

Remember to run

source install/setup.bash