Autonomous sailboats: An emerging technology for ocean sampling and surveillance

Abstract

Autonomous sailboats are robotic vessels that use wind energy for propulsion and control the sails and rudders without human intervention. The use of autonomous sailboats for ocean sampling has been tentatively proposed before, but there have been minor efforts towards the development and deployment of actual prototypes, due to a number of technical limitations and significant risks of operation. Currently, most of the limitations have been surpassed, with the availability of extremely low power electronics, flexible computational systems, reliable communication devices and high performance renewable power sources. At the same time, some of the major risks have been mitigated, allowing this emerging technology to become an effective tool for a wide range of applications in real scenarios. We illustrate some of these scenarios and we describe the status of the current efforts being made to develop operational prototypes.

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

“…Erckens et al from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have built the autonomous robotic sailboat AVALON to compete in the MICROTRANSAT Challenge and presented navigation software and to calculate the optimal path to reach the specified destination, which has been tested in Swiss lakes and Atlantic Ocean and proved to control its sailing route, even under bad sea conditions . The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto (FEUP) has designed a robotic sailing vehicle (FASt), which can achieve the function of autonomous navigation . FASt's performances (in upwind mode, downwind mode, station keeping, etc) are represented in many sea trials .…”

“…44 The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto (FEUP) has designed a robotic sailing vehicle (FASt), which can achieve the function of autonomous navigation. [48][49][50][51][52] FASt's performances (in upwind mode, downwind mode, station keeping, etc) are represented in many sea trials. 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.…”

Battery Powered RC Boats: A Review of Its Developments for Various Applications

“…Over the past decades, the oceanographic community has begun relying on robotics and automated devices to collect data. Recently, the state of the art technologies such as autonomous underwater vehicles, underwater profilers and unmanned surface vehicles have increased exponentially [122,123].…”

Line following for an autonomous sailboat using potential fields method

“…Since they rely on renewable solar and wind energies, autonomous sailing robots provide a promising solution for long-term missions and semi-persistent presence in the oceans and a lot of sailing robot projects have been launched recently all around the world (see for example [10], [11] for a survey on recent developments in robotic sailing). Autonomous sailing robotics is however faced with two inherent difficulties: the uncontrollable and partially unpredictable nature of thrust forces (wind direction and wind speed) on one hand and the complex kinematics and dynamics of a sailboat (aero and hydrodynamic properties of sails and hull) on the other hand.…”