N-BOAT: An Autonomous Robotic Sailboat

Abstract

This article presents the ongoing development of an autonomous sailboat control architecture and a prototype sailboat constructed for experimental validation of the proposed architecture. The main goal of the project is to allow long endurance autonomous missions for ocean monitoring. In order to accomplish such objective, the system relies on wind forces propulsion instead of motors. We present the mathematical model using PID and Fuzzy controllers to control the sail and the rudder. Furthermore, we also present a study of the hardware architecture that enables better control performance of the system.