Sailing without Wind Sensor and Other Hardware and Software Innovations

Abstract

In our paper, we propose a solution for a robotic sailboat which is adapted to long travel across the ocean. We tried to be as innovative as possible and stray out of the classical designs. In fact, robots often have different shapes from vehicles for mankind since first of all there are no human on board which means less constraints with regards to security, ergonomy or comfort. In this paper two innovations are presented. The first one addresses the main issue when navigating for a long time with a fully actuated sailing robot which is the energy used for guidance, navigation and control. One can use big solar panels to overcome that problem. Instead, we propose to use a wind vane self steering device. Our idea is to put this device on the bow which simplifies its design. This device regulates the trajectory of the boat relatively to wind direction. As a consequence, the wind sensor is not necessary. The second innovation is a strategy of navigation between waypoints. This paper will also present the prototype we used for testing those algorithms.