Short-Term Path Planning for High-Level Navigation Control of N-Boat - The Sailboat Robot

The short-term path planning of a robotic sailboat is a specially challenging task, since the sailboat can not reach points that are directly against the wind following a straight path given by some higher-level trajectory planner. Towards solving this specific problem, this work proposes a short-term path planning method for autonomous sailboats that is capable of dealing with upwind situations. In order to accomplish this, an initial path is geometrically defined and an optimization is done over this path, using genetic algorithm. Basically, our path planning method uses the distance ranges available (longitudinal and lateral) for the maneuvering and the sailboat desired heading to generate points in-between, which are reachable given the wind restriction. The proposed method uses these path planning parameters to come up with an optimized path. Results demonstrate and verifies the feasibility and the usefulness of the method.