An embedded low-power control system for autonomous sailboats

Abstract

This work presents a small and affordable autonomous sailboat platform designed to be transported and operated by one or two people without any special means. The sailboat is based on a RC One Meter class vessel equipped with a low power 8-bit microcontroller board and a set of navigation sensors (compass, GPS, wind vane, ...) and a 868 MHz RF module. It has been designed to serve as a low cost replicable testbed platform for research in autonomous sailing. The embedded control system makes the sailboat completely autonomous to sail a route determined as a sequence of waypoints, adapting its sailing point dynamically to wind conditions. The control system is completed with an off-board base station that permits to monitor and control the boat or defining a new route. The system is characterized by its long autonomy and robustness in case of communication failures.