AEOLUS, the ETH Autonomous Model Sailboat

Path planning and control are particularly challenging tasks for a sailboat. In contrast to land vehicles or motorboats, the movement of a sailboat is heavily restricted by the wind direction. This paper focuses on the low-level control acting on the rudder and the sails. Specifically, a standard proportional controller and a non-linear controller have been implemented to track a reference heading. Further, special control algorithms that are activated during a tack or a jibe perform fast and smooth maneuvers. The path planner is based on the minimization of the weighted sum of different cost functions and allows for multi-objective optimization of the boat trajectory such as obstacle avoidance, time-to-target minimization and tactical behaviors.