MPC-Based Collaborative Control of Sail and Rudder for Unmanned Sailboat

Abstract

In the traditional motion control method of an unmanned sailboat, the sail and rudder are divided into two independent controllers. The sail is used to obtain the thrust and the rudder is used to adjust the yaw angle. The traditional control method does not consider the synergy between the two controllers and ignores the influence of the roll angle on sailing. It is easy for these methods to cause an excessive roll angle and large yaw angle error, which will weaken the safe navigation and accurate path tracking of an unmanned sailboat. This paper presents a collaborative control method of sail and rudder based on model predictive control. A four-degree-of-freedom kinematics and dynamics model of the unmanned sailboat considering roll angle was established, with the yaw angle and roll angle as the control objectives at the same time. The collaborative control method outputs sail angle and rudder angle simultaneously. By comparing the motion of this method and the separation control of sail and rudder under the same wind field conditions, it is verified that the collaborative control has better effects of yaw angle control and roll angle limitation and can obtain a more accurate path tracking effect.