Towards the Electromechanical Design of an Autonomous Robotic Sailboat

Abstract

Due to numerous influencing factors such as climate change, water quality, population growth, and geopolitical disputes over territory, among others, the world never looked so closely to our oceans. With the recent development of unmanned craft, demands such as water and marine borders monitoring can now be met with relatively low cost. A problem yet be solved in this kind of mission is the supply of power for the robotic systems given the difficulty of continuous supplying hundreds of vessels in the ocean. Therefore, this work proposes techniques and tools for the development of an automated sailboat driven primarily by wind power combined with a power system that is capable of generating electricity through photovoltaic cells located on the deck of the boat and stored in a bank of nautical batteries. Both the electronics and the electromechanical parts present in the aquatic vehicle are autonomous and therefore do not require the boat to return to land for a systematically refueling.