🌊 CoUGARs: Configurable Underwater Group of Autonomous Robots

CoUGARs is a low-cost, configurable AUV platform designed for multi-agent autonomy research by the Field Robotic Systems Lab (FROST Lab) at Brigham Young University.

🚀 Get Started

Prerequisites: 64-bit Linux, free disk space (10+ GB recommended), and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU (for HoloOcean simulation).

• Install Docker and VSCode Dev Containers.

• Add a GitHub SSH key and clone the cougars-dev repository.

  git clone git@github.com:cougars-auv/cougars-dev.git

• Choose a development workflow:

  Simulation (HoloOcean):

  • Build a runtime image for HoloOcean-ROS. When prompted to run ./build_container.sh, specify the branch nelson/fgo-dev using ./build_container.sh -b nelson/fgo-dev.

  • Open the cougars-dev repository in VSCode and use the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) to select "Dev Containers: Reopen in Container." When prompted to choose a devcontainer.json file, click CoUGARs Dev (HoloOcean).

  • Once the containers load, open a new terminal window using Ctrl + Alt + Shift + ` and launch a HoloOcean scenario in the holoocean-ct container using ./holoocean_launch.sh.

    cd ~/cougars-dev/scripts && ./holoocean_launch.sh

  • Open a new terminal, build the ros2_ws workspace, and select the matching launch configuration using ./sim_launch.sh.

    cd ~/cougars-dev/ros2_ws && colcon build
    cd ~/cougars-dev/scripts && ./sim_launch.sh

  Recorded Data (rosbag2):

  • Open the cougars-dev repository in VSCode and use the Command Palette (Ctrl + Shift + P) to select "Dev Containers: Reopen in Container." When prompted to choose a devcontainer.json file, click CoUGARs Dev.

  • Once the containers load, copy your rosbag2 bag into the bags folder at the root of the repository.

  • Open a new terminal window using Ctrl + Alt + Shift + `, build the ros2_ws workspace, and select the bag using ./bag_launch.sh.

    cd ~/cougars-dev/ros2_ws && colcon build
    cd ~/cougars-dev/scripts && ./bag_launch.sh

📖 Wiki

Check out the GitHub Wiki for up-to-date documentation.

🤝 Contributing

• Create a Branch: Create a new branch using the format name/feature (e.g., nelson/repo-docs).

• Make Changes: Develop and debug your new feature. Add good documentation.

  If you need to add dependencies, update the package.xml, Dockerfile, cougars.repos, or dependencies.repos in your branch and test building the image locally. The CI will automatically build and push the new image to Docker Hub upon merge.

• Sync Frequently: Regularly rebase your branch against main (or merge main into your branch) to prevent conflicts.

• Submit a PR: Open a pull request, ensure required tests pass, and merge once approved.

📚 Citations

Please cite our relevant publications if you find this repository useful for your research:

CoUGARs

@misc{durrant2025lowcostmultiagentfleetacoustic,
  title={Low-cost Multi-agent Fleet for Acoustic Cooperative Localization Research},
  author={Nelson Durrant and Braden Meyers and Matthew McMurray and Clayton Smith and Brighton Anderson and Tristan Hodgins and Kalliyan Velasco and Joshua G. Mangelson},
  year={2025},
  eprint={2511.08822},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08822},
}

HoloOcean-ROS

@misc{meyers2025testingevaluationunderwatervehicle,
  title={Testing and Evaluation of Underwater Vehicle Using Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation with HoloOcean},
  author={Braden Meyers and Joshua G. Mangelson},
  year={2025},
  eprint={2511.07687},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07687},
}

HoloOcean (General Use)

@inproceedings{potokar2022holooceanunderwaterroboticssim,
  author={Easton Potokar and Spencer Ashford and Michael Kaess and Joshua G. Mangelson},
  title={Holo{O}cean: An Underwater Robotics Simulator},
  booktitle={Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, ICRA},
  address={Philadelphia, PA, USA},
  month={May},
  year={2022}
}

HoloOcean 2.0 (Features)

@misc{romrell2025previewholoocean20,
  title={A Preview of HoloOcean 2.0},
  author={Blake Romrell and Abigail Austin and Braden Meyers and Ryan Anderson and Carter Noh and Joshua G. Mangelson},
  year={2025},
  eprint={2510.06160},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06160},
}