{"ID":5935860,"CreatedAt":"2026-07-07T01:22:02.77346169Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-07-07T02:10:06.972658124Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03072","arxiv_id":"2607.03072","title":"LOTUSim: Multi-Domain Simulator for Marine Robotics","abstract":"Simulation is essential for maritime robotics, supporting operator training, mission rehearsal, and human-vehicle interaction in environments where real-world testing is costly or hazardous. Existing simulators focus primarily on autonomy systems and often lack human-in-the-loop interaction and realistic environmental physics. This paper introduces LOTUSim, an open-source, real-time maritime simulator supporting multi-user interaction across aerial, surface, and underwater robotic systems for coordinated naval-style operations. The first contribution of this work is enabling real-time interactive performance for users while ensuring scalability to large fleets operating within a shared interactive simulation environment. Validation demonstrates robust human-in-the-loop performance, maintaining strict real-time execution and high visual fidelity while scaling to large heterogeneous maritime drone swarms. The second contribution is a computationally efficient, Ekman-inspired layered, underwater current model that captures wind-driven, depth-dependent flow dynamics with sufficient physical fidelity for large-scale simulations. Validation against ocean reanalysis data demonstrates substantially improved accuracy compared to commonly used stochastic Gauss-Markov current models. These results confirm LOTUSim's suitability as a simulation platform for operatorin-the-loop maritime robotics research.","short_abstract":"Simulation is essential for maritime robotics, supporting operator training, mission rehearsal, and human-vehicle interaction in environments where real-world testing is costly or hazardous. Existing simulators focus primarily on autonomy systems and often lack human-in-the-loop interaction and realistic environmental...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.03072","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.03072v1","authors":"[\"Cédric Buche\",\"Juliette Grosset\",\"Hélène Lechêne\",\"Marie Dubromel\",\"Pierig Havez-Bodivit\",\"Malcom Neo\",\"Julien Prodhon\"]","published":"2026-07-03T08:09:01Z","proceeding":"cs.MA","tasks":"[\"cs.MA\",\"cs.RO\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}