Project POSIM

POSIM — Platform for Ocean Simulation is an open-source maritime robotics simulation platform built on ROS 2 and Gazebo. It provides underwater environments, vehicles, sensors and task scenes that can be combined to develop and test robotics applications. POSIM carries forward the DAVE simulation library, with current development and documentation maintained under the POSIM name.

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This Wiki documents ROS 2 Lyrical and Gazebo Jetty. Source code: IOES-Lab/POSIM. Installation and usage instructions are maintained here; the previous DAVE documentation is not required.

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Getting Started

  1. Check POSIM System Requirements for your host and rendering requirements.
  2. Choose POSIM Docker Guide for the tested container candidate, or POSIM Native Installation to build on Ubuntu.
  3. Follow POSIM Quickstart & Backend Support to start a world, inspect sensor messages and stop the simulation.

For common setup problems, see Troubleshooting in the Quickstart. The existing model and plugin guides are grouped below.

Source and Development Status

The main branch contains the Lyrical/Jetty library. Published ARM64 and AMD64 Docker images are validation candidates, not an official POSIM 1.0 or main release. WGPU and WAM-V work remain under review as of 2026-10-01. See POSIM Development & Release Status for the source states and POSIM Docker Guide for exact image tags and digests.

ROS package names such as dave_demos and dave_worlds, launch filenames and the src/dave checkout directory are retained for compatibility. Use the names shown in the commands rather than replacing them with posim_*.

Overview

Project Objective

The project brings together reusable components for maritime robotics simulation: