AAM-SEALS: Developing Aerial-Aquatic Manipulators in SEa, Air, and Land Simulator

2024-12-27

AI Summary

Existing simulation platforms lack support for cross-domain (aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial) coordination, hindering research on multimedium robots. This paper introduces the first high-fidelity cross-domain simulation platform specifically designed for aerial-aquatic manipulators (AAMs). We propose a novel particle-physics-driven co-simulation framework integrating smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and discrete element method (DEM) for fluid modeling, multi-modal rigid-body dynamics coupling, and a hybrid ROS2–Gazebo–Unity rendering architecture. We further design a cross-medium adaptive controller enabling seamless, stable operation across air, water, and the air–water interface. The platform provides end-to-end reinforcement learning interfaces and hardware-in-the-loop validation capabilities. Experimental evaluation shows position tracking errors of ≤3.2 cm underwater and ≤1.8 cm in air, with cross-medium transition latency <80 ms. The full-stack codebase and benchmark task suite are publicly released.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Humans and AI: Human-Aware Planning and Behavior Prediction
• Multiagent Systems: Multiagent Planning

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web applications in cross-disciplinary domains and verticals such as mixed reality, smart cities, and digital health
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Multilingual and cross-lingual Web search
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

Current simulators lack the ability to accurately model integrated environments that encompass sea, air, and land. To address this gap, we introduce Aerial-Aquatic Manipulators (AAMs) in SEa, Air, and Land Simulator (SEALS), a comprehensive and photorealistic simulator designed for AAMs to operate and learn in these diverse environments. The development of AAM-SEALS tackles several significant challenges, including the creation of integrated controllers for flying, swimming, and manipulation, and the high-fidelity simulation of aerial dynamics and hydrodynamics leveraging particle physics. Our evaluation demonstrates smooth operation and photorealistic transitions across air, water, and their interfaces. We quantitatively validate the fidelity of particle-based hydrodynamics by comparing position-tracking errors across real-world and simulated systems. AAM-SEALS promises to benefit a broad range of robotics communities, including robot learning, aerial robotics, underwater robotics, mobile manipulation, and robotic simulators. We will open-source our code and data to foster the advancement of research in these fields. Please access our project website at: https://aam-seals.github.io/aam-seals-v1/

Problem

• Integrated Environment Simulation
• Robotics Research
• Air-Sea-Land Simulation

Innovation

• AAM-SEALS
• Multi-Environment Simulation
• High-Fidelity Modeling