A Browser-Native Digital Test Range for Benchmarking 4D Ocean-Glider Planning Algorithms

A Browser-Native Digital Test Range for Benchmarking 4D Ocean-Glider Planning Algorithms

|Authors: Edward Holmberg, Elias Ioup, Mahdi Abdelguerfi

|Venue: arXiv preprint | Year: 2026

|arXiv: 2608.13511v1

Abstract

Repeated in-situ evaluation of ocean-glider planners requires scarce vehicles, operators, deployment and recovery resources, and ocean conditions that cannot be reset for competing algorithms. We present a guided, installation-free browser-native digital test range that transforms a selected region into a reproducible four-dimensional experiment. The system leads users from regional domain selection through mission-scoped bathymetry, time/depth forcing, science objectives, optional task decomposition, route specification, current-advected execution, observation generation, and scoring. Its primary contribution is a common plan-to-observation contract unifying vehicle, sensing, and evaluator assumptions across manual routes, transparent built-in algorithms, and imported classical or learned-planner outputs, while exported artifacts form dataset-ready records. A controlled Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) evaluates five classical planners in two episodes, three deterministic seeds, and a calibrated 60-hour horizon. All 54 missions completed and recovered without hard violations, while planner rankings and dive-policy effects revealed operational-scientific tradeoffs. An authentic public deployment supplied a field-referenced audit to scope current kinematic boundaries. Separately, source-locked GliderFlight 1.2.0 achieved native-to-browser parity through Pyodide/WebAssembly, establishing a pathway for high-fidelity multi-tier simulation. The resulting operational space is scientifically traceable and component-qualified for mission-scale pre-deployment experimentation.

Key Contributions

• Repeated in-situ evaluation of ocean-glider planners requires scarce vehicles, operators, deploym…
• We present a guided, installation-free browser-native digital test range that transforms a select…
• The system leads users from regional domain selection through mission-scoped bathymetry, time/dep…
• Its primary contribution is a common plan-to-observation contract unifying vehicle, sensing, and …
• A controlled Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) evaluates five classical planners in t…

Topics

• reinforcement-learning
• planning
• control
• benchmark

Code & Data

No code repository linked in paper metadata.

BibTeX

@article{Holmberg2026_260813511v1,
  title     = {A Browser-Native Digital Test Range for Benchmarking 4D Ocean-Glider Planning Algorithms},
  author    = {Edward Holmberg and Elias Ioup and Mahdi Abdelguerfi},
  year      = {2026},
  eprint    = {2608.13511v1},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  primaryClass  = {cs.RO},
  url       = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.13511v1}
}