Design and Control of A Hybrid Sailboat for Enhanced Tacking Maneuver

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid sailboat design with electric propulsion and control strategies to improve tacking maneuver efficiency and success rate in complex wind conditions.

Contribution

A novel hybrid sailboat system combining sail and electric propulsion with optimized control strategies for better maneuverability.

Findings

Approximately 10% increase in average speed during tacking.

Enhanced success rate of tacking maneuvers.

Effective control parameter tuning through experimental methods.

Abstract

Sailing robots provide a low-cost solution to conduct the ocean missions such as marine exploration, pollution detection, and border surveillance, etc. However, compared with other propeller-driven surface vessels, sailboat suffers in complex marine wind field due to its low mobility. Especially in tacking, sailboats are required to head upwind, and need to make a zig-zag path. In this trajectory, a series of turnings, which will cross the challenging no-go zone, place significant challenge as it will reduce speed greatly and consequently result in unsuccessful turning. This paper presents a hybrid sailboat design to solve this issue. Electric propellers and control system are added to a model sailboat. We have further designed the control strategy and tuned the parameters (PWM-time) experimentally. Finally, the system and control can complete the tacking maneuver with average speed approximately 10% higher and enhanced success rate, though the sailboat weight is much heavier.