lighthill
GPU-vectorized per-link hydrodynamics for articulated underwater robots in NVIDIA Isaac Lab.
⚠️ Pre-alpha. The package name is reserved on PyPI; the physics engine is in active development. APIs are not yet stable.
What it is
Out of the box, Isaac Lab simulates rigid bodies in air/vacuum. lighthill turns it
into an underwater simulator by applying, every physics step and per link:
- buoyancy
- drag
- added mass
- currents
The key difference from existing fast underwater simulators: forces are computed across an articulated robot — vehicle + manipulator(s) — not a single rigid body. That captures the vehicle↔arm hydrodynamic coupling that single-body simulators miss, while staying GPU-vectorized across thousands of parallel environments for modern RL.
- Topology-agnostic: UV, UVMS, multi-arm, swimming-snake — configured, not hardcoded.
- Config-driven: declare links and coefficients; no per-robot force code.
- Validation-first: ships with a suite checked against standard analytical references.
It fills a real gap: fast underwater sims are single-body; multi-body underwater sims are too slow for large-scale RL.
Status
| Stage | Pre-alpha (name reservation + scaffold) |
| Python | ≥ 3.10 |
| License | MIT |
Name
Named for Sir James Lighthill, whose elongated-body theory of aquatic locomotion is the foundational hydrodynamic model of how slender, articulated bodies generate thrust through reactive (added-mass) forces — exactly the physics this library computes per link.
License
MIT © 2026 Jeff Richley
1 maintainer
Metadata
1 maintainer
Release files for lighthill 0.0.1
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Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
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| lighthill-0.0.1.tar.gz | 2.8 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| lighthill-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 6.7 kB
Release files / lighthill-0.0.1.tar.gz
| Download URL | lighthill-0.0.1.tar.gz |
|---|---|
| Size | 2.8 kB |
| Tags | Source |
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Transparency logRelease files / lighthill-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl
| Download URL | lighthill-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl |
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| Size | 3.8 kB |
| Tags | Python 3 |
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