OPEN SIMULATION PLATFORM

Towards a maritime ecosystem for efficient co-simulation

OPEN SIMULATION PLATFORM

Towards a maritime ecosystem for efficient co-simulation

The Open Simulation Platform

The Open Simulation Platform (OSP) is an open-source industry initiative for co-simulation of maritime equipment, systems and entire ships. With steadily increasing complexity due to the increasing use of software in ship systems, the integration of equipment and systems from many providers and a gap in systems engineering traditions, the consequence is apparent: It has become increasingly difficult to design, build, operate and assure ships and other maritime/offshore assets, and to balance cost with environmental footprint and safety.   

The OSP sets out to change this by providing the maritime industry with key tools and working processes for technical systems engineering, enabling efficient and effective construction and maintenance of digital twins for system integration, testing and verification. 

Building on the Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) standard, the key principles are to: 

  • Enable the re-use of simulation models and digital twin equipment across organizations without exposing sensitive IP by protecting models and control system software inside black-box executables. 
  • To establish a standard for connecting models and control systems from any simulation tool or programming language in one, large co-simulation to enable virtual system integration. 
  • To enable cross-organization cooperation and platform interoperability by transparency and open-source principles. 

Main components of OSP  

  • OSP libcosim: a C/C++ library for co-simulation, ready to be integrated into any simulation software in need of co-simulation capabilities.
  • Demo applications and examples showcasing the use of the library, as well as a range of supporting tools. 
  • OSP Interface Specification: an emerging standard and ontology for simulation models of maritime equipment and systems. 
  • OSP Reference Models: a set of example model implementations adhering to the Interface Specification, serving as a starting point and inspiration for your own models. 

Most OSP components are open source licenced under MPL 2.0, meaning only updates/improvement to the components must be shared back to the community, while applications employing the components can be kept private. Some parts are also MIT licenced, meaning they can be freely distributed and modified.  

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