Automating the Future of Inland Shipping: Photorealistic and Physically Accurate Simulations for Inland Waterway Transport

The growing global emphasis on automation in maritime transport has now reached the inland waterway sector, which is crucial for regional logistics and environmental sustainability. In response to the NAIADES III action plan set out by the European Commission, VERA aims for a state-of-the-art virtual test field specifically for inland shipping sector to modernise and digitalise the inland waterway sector. Centred on major waterways in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, VERA enables safe, cost-effective and scalable testing, supporting the digitalisation, automation and sustainability objectives set out in European mobility strategies. This high-fidelity simulation platform supports the testing of automation functions under realistic traffic and environmental conditions and also enabling software-, hardware- and human-in-the-loop testing. Built using UNREAL ENGINE 5, the system features photorealistic terrain modelling, physically accurate ship dynamics, emulated visual and navigational sensors with error models, and historically accurate traffic scenarios. Here, visual realism is a key design goal, especially since inland shipmasters often depend on both navigational data from on-board sensors and visual cues from land features to navigate safely and effectively. Therefore, an accurate representation of the environment, including natural terrain, urban structures, realistic weather conditions and waterway infrastructure, both directly and indirectly via sensor perception is essential. This paper presents the features of the VERA simulation and focuses on the visual design aspect of the test field, outlining the methods used to generate real-world environments as well as the implementation of the visual sensors available to use in the simulation, such as LiDAR, radar, and camera.