HoloOcean simulation setup

Warning: untested. This HoloOcean setup has not been tested by building or running the simulation containers.

Simulation is separate from competition. Its containers are holoocean-ros and leviathan-sim; the latter runs robot-side adapters and mounts HoloOcean interfaces.

Prerequisites

Install Docker Engine and Docker Compose. Keep the external repositories beside this repository:

uw/
  2026-27WaterCode/
  holoocean-ros/
  HoloOcean/

The setup needs holoocean-ros/docker/dev, holoocean-ros/holoocean_interfaces, holoocean-ros/config, and HoloOcean/client. Install the Ocean world into ~/.local/share/holoocean. Follow the external repositories’ setup instructions.

On Ubuntu, install Docker using the competition prerequisites. The simulation installer also needs Git, curl, GnuPG, sudo, and Python’s venv module:

sudo apt install git curl gnupg ca-certificates python3-venv

Then bash docker/simulation/install.sh clones the external repositories beside this repo, installs the HoloOcean client into its own virtual environment, and downloads Ocean. It also configures the NVIDIA container toolkit when NVIDIA drivers are detected.

A graphical desktop is needed for the existing display mounts. The NVIDIA option requires NVIDIA drivers and the NVIDIA container toolkit. -N omits the NVIDIA runtime; whether rendering works depends on your machine and HoloOcean.

Start simulation

From the repository root, choose one:

bash docker/simulation/setup.sh -H  # NVIDIA (default)
bash docker/simulation/setup.sh -N  # without NVIDIA runtime

These start containers; they do not automatically launch a simulation scenario. Enter HoloOcean:

bash docker/simulation/enter.sh

Use the scenario and ROS launch instructions from holoocean-ros inside that container. To enter the robot adapter container:

bash docker/simulation/enter.sh -R

Inside the adapter container, source ROS and build the packages you need:

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
cd /home/ubuntu/2026-27WaterCode/fishROS_ws
colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select holoocean_interfaces controller_node
source install/setup.bash

The reconstruction converter additionally requires sonar_oculus, which this setup does not install. The existing HoloOcean experiment files remain in controller_node; this change only separates Docker setup.

Competition and simulation share the repository’s build directories. Stop the other workflow before switching and rebuilding. Both use host networking, so avoid launching real robot controllers and simulation controllers together.

Stop the simulation containers from the host:

bash docker/simulation/stop.sh