Abstract
The development of a navigation system for autonomous robotic sailing is a particularly challenging task since the sailboat robot uses unpredictable wind forces for its propulsion besides working in a highly nonlinear and harsh environment, the water. Toward solving the problems that appear in this kind of environment, we propose a navigation system which allows the sailboat to reach any desired target points in its working environment. This navigation system consists of a low-level heading controller and a short-term path planner for situations against the wind. For the low-level heading controller, a gain-scheduling proportional-integral (GS-PI) controller is shown to better describe the nonlinearities inherent to the sailboat movement. The gain-scheduling-PI consists of a table that contains the best control parameters that are learned/defined for a particular maneuver and perform the scheduling according to each situation. The idea is to design specialized controllers which meet the specific control objectives of each application. For achieving short-term path-planned targets, a new approach for optimization of the tacking maneuvering to reach targets against the wind is also proposed. This method takes into account two tacking parameters: the side distance available for the maneuvering and the desired sailboat heading when tacking. An optimization method based on genetic algorithm is used in order to find satisfactory upwind paths. Results of various experiments verify the validity and robustness of the developed methods and navigation system.
Highlights
The main advantage of using sailboat robots is their applicability in long-term missions, operating autonomously on water surfaces during weeks or months without a human operator
There is no current technology based on naturally replenished energy, as solar cells, that can allow for this, because the consumption of such unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) systems is bigger than any onboard power plant can produce using renewable energy
The contributions of our work are inside the realm of the navigation systems for autonomous sailing, we propose strategies for low-level control and shortterm path planning
Summary
The main advantage of using sailboat robots is their applicability in long-term missions, operating autonomously on water surfaces during weeks or months without a human operator. It can be added the simplicity of their hardware solutions, which must be projected based on green robotics paradigms, using low-cost and low-consuming energy platforms. Sailboats are wind-propelled, spending less energy than required for operation on conventional USV This feature can be interesting in long-term missions as the recent traverse of the Atlantic Ocean by the Sailbuoy Met (SB Met).[1] Other missions in environment monitoring operations, such as monitoring coral reefs, verifying quality of water, and surveillance of borders can rely on such approach, using sailboats
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