Over the past decade, interest in autonomous vessels significantly increased as the technology improved, especially in the automotive industry.Unlike cars, ships travel in a wild environment and maritime lanes are not limited by white lines.This makes the design of fully autonomous vessels even more challenging.Additionally, the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions led to a renewed interest in wind propulsion.Sailboats have several advantages, such as Leather Keychain full energy autonomy and a limited environmental impact.
The Microtransat Challenge, which consists of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, is a tremendous test field.This paper describes, within that frame, a design procedure for the development of a robust fully autonomous Shafts and Rods sailboat to be deployed for long-term missions.In this paper, the mechanical and electronic design strategies are presented.A focus is on reliability and power management.Moreover, a test procedure for validating each design increment is described as well as a path plan that considers the risk of collision and weather routing with wind and currents.
The Microtransat remains a challenge that no autonomous ship has ever succeeded (and has been completed by a single unmanned vessel, SB Met in 2018).However, the results by Breizh Tigresse and Sealeon in 2015 and 2018 made a step forward in terms of time and distance.They are presented and analyzed in this work.