An Adaptive Position Keeping Algorithm For Autonomous Sailboats

Autonomous sailboats are potential solutions for in-situ ocean measurement thanks to their high energy efficiency. Indeed, the ability for them to maintain their position is crucial for ocean data collection. Previous study has demonstrated a position keeping method for an autonomous sailboat and has theoretically proved the stability. As this method is ineffective against wind disturbance, we propose a more feasible algorithm for real environment in this paper. A retrofitted model sailboat is developed to evaluate the performance of our approach in an artificial wind field. Simulation and experiment results under several different cases show that our proposed algorithm is robust.