4. Sailboat ordering

4.1 Structuring control laws

Although humans have been using sailboats for centuries, automatically managing the movements of this type of vehicle presents a real difficulty. The main reasons for this lie in the fact that this type of underpowered vehicle has highly non-linear dynamics (section 3), with in particular plan directions that are not directly accessible (non-navigable areas facing into the wind). Conventional automatic control approaches are therefore difficult to apply, especially as the propulsive force is not directly controllable, since it depends on a variable external to the system: the wind. For these reasons, controlling the movements of an autonomous sailboat is generally achieved through a loop, classic in mobile robotics, of the perception/decision/action type...