A simulator of underwater glider missions for path planning

In this article, we present a mission simulator developed for the Alseamar SeaExplorer underwater gliders. By taking into consideration a 4D time-varying environment, it provides an estimation of the most important metrics: the battery level, the mission duration and the distance traveled by the glider. The main strengths of this simulator are first its use upstream as a tool to aid the glider pilots to define a feasible mission plan. Secondly, through its interoperability with the Alseamar mission management system "GLIMPSE", it works as an internal model (replanning) during the mission. Finally, it generates adjacency matrices of weighted graphs on which our high level path planning algorithms for a single glider as well as a fleet are based. This simulator is compared to a real experimental mission in order to confirm its accuracy and efficiency.