Design and Implementation of a Control System for a Sailboat Robot

Abstract

This article discusses a control architecture for autonomous sailboat navigation and also presents a sailboat prototype built for experimental validation of the proposed architecture. The main goal is to allow long endurance autonomous missions, such as ocean monitoring. As the system propulsion relies on wind forces instead of motors, sailboat techniques are introduced and discussed, including the needed sensors, actuators and control laws. Mathematical modeling of the sailboat, as well as control strategies developed using PID and fuzzy controllers to control the sail and the rudder are also presented. Furthermore, we also present a study of the hardware architecture that enables the system overall performance to be increased. The sailboat movement can be planned through predetermined geographical way-points provided by a base station. Simulated and experimental results are presented to validate the control architecture, including tests performed on a lake. Underwater robotics can rely on such a platform by using it as a basis vessel, where autonomous charging of unmanned vehicles could be done or else as a relay surface base station for transmitting data.

Current status and prospects of marine renewable energy applied in ocean robots

“…FASt's performances (in upwind mode, downwind mode, station keeping, etc) are represented in many sea trials . Luiz Goncalves et al in Brazil have developed two prototypes of autonomous sailboat (N‐Boat I and N‐Boat II) and also studied the technology‐related sailboat, including control strategies, hardware architecture, prototype design, etc . National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), partnered with Saildrone Inc, has developed an USV, called Saildrone, for research in the arctic warming, marine animals, and ecosystem change.…”

“…52 Luiz Goncalves et al in Brazil have developed two prototypes of autonomous sailboat (N-Boat I and N-Boat II) and also studied the technologyrelated sailboat, including control strategies, hardware architecture, prototype design, etc. 46,[53][54][55] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), partnered with Saildrone Inc, has developed an USV, called Saildrone, for research in the arctic warming, marine animals, and ecosystem change. In 2015, Saildrones have successfully completed the atmospheric and oceanic measurement mission of Bering Sea for 97 days, and in 2016, Saildrones have been deployed in harsh Bering Sea to survey the fisheries, marine mammal, etc.…”

High-Level Path Planning for an Autonomous Sailboat Robot Using Q-Learning

“…Nonetheless, since the propulsion source of a sailboat (wind) is usually complex and the sailboat is subject to other random forces such as currents and waves, its dynamics are highly non-linear, making its automatic control a non-trivial problem [4,5]. Particularly, by our experience, we noticed that path planning methods developed for general mobile robots will not work in the same way in this kind of autonomous vehicle.…”

Dynamic multifoveated structure for real-time vision tasks in robotic systems

“…As an immediate application, this implementation will work as the vision-processing system embarked on our wearable glove device [28], and also in decision-making algorithms for payload applications in our robotic platforms, as drones, and in a robotic sailboat [29]. Applications already being developed for such platforms are such as visual attention and objects/target recognition for harvesting (the glove), navigation, and localization (in the sailboat).…”