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Towing with Sailboat Robots

  • Conference paper
Robotic Sailing 2014

Abstract

Moving huge objects floating at the surface of the ocean (such as containers or icebergs) with boats requires many human operators and a lot of energy. This is mainly due to the fact that when humans operate such equipment, time is costly. Now, when we have time (as when robots operate, for instance), it is possible to move arbitrarily large objects, for over long distances, with a limited quantity of energy. This is a consequence of the fact that in the water, the friction forces are proportional to the square of the speed (i.e., when we go slowly, we have almost no friction). This paper proposes the use of a sailboat robot to tow large objects. It shows which control law could be used is order to (i) avoid loops inside the towing cable, (ii) avoid collisions between the robot and the towed object, and (iii) move the object toward the desired direction. The control law is validated on a simulation where the object to be towed has to follow a trajectory corresponding to a large circle.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab-STICC/CID/IHSEV, STIC/OSM, ENSTA Bretagne, 2 Rue F. Verny, 29806, Brest, France

    Luc Jaulin & Fabrice Le Bars

Authors
  1. Luc Jaulin
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  2. Fabrice Le Bars
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luc Jaulin .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bio-Inspired Electronics & Reconfigurable Computing Research Group, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

    Fearghal Morgan

  2. Hewlett Packard HP Cloud, Galway, Ireland

    Dermot Tynan

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Jaulin, L., Le Bars, F. (2015). Towing with Sailboat Robots. In: Morgan, F., Tynan, D. (eds) Robotic Sailing 2014. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10076-0_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10076-0_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-10075-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-10076-0

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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