Robotic Sailing and Support Technologies

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental monitoring of certain aquatic environments, from littoral to extensive marine protected areas in high seas, is still mainly done with manned vessels or moored buoys or sensing platforms. The development and implementation of legal commitments on aquatic environments under governmental jurisdiction is often limited or even impeded by factors suh as the extension of these areas, difficult weather conditions, and—finally—the cost of the human and technical means required.

Autonomous vessels, and in particular sailing robots, may reduce the cost of ocean data acquisition as platforms for collecting all kind of information, from meteorological and oceanographic data, to ecological and environmental information. Other applications of great interest for those monitoring platforms are marine traffic and pollution control, security, surveillance, and rescue, to name a few.

Autonomous sailing vessels constitute an ideal platform for data acquisition in water natural environments. Moreover, being wind-propelled, they offer a potential for long-term operation in the ocean, given the considerable reduction of power consumption they need for navigation. In addition, this reduced energy demand makes them especially suited for being fully solar-powered.

An ideal requirement for autonomous sailing vessels is to be able to perform adequately in “under-control” operating conditions, for extended periods of time in very demanding and changing environments. Consequently, long-term autonomy poses a fundamental problem in autonomous sailing as in many areas of research in robotics. This requirement obviously demands robust and seafaring boat designs, which can withstand rough oceanic conditions, but also dynamic path and route planning capacities onboard, to adapt to changing sea, wind, and weather conditions. Furthermore, long-term autonomy requires the vessel to be self-conscious of its operating conditions and performance, aside from an infrastructure for remote monitoring and control.

This Special Issue is centered on robotic sailing and support technologies and invites the submission of research articles in the following topics:

• Naval architecture of autonomous vessels: new designs and advanced materials;
• Modelling, simulation, control, and stability analysis;
• Sensors and actuators for autonomous sailboats;
• Embedded control and system architectures for autonomous sailing’
• Collision avoidance, boat-to-boat communication;
• Route planning, navigation, and optimization;
• Machine learning and self-tuning control algorithms for autonomous sailboats;
• Long term autonomy in robotic sailing;
• Energy and power management;
• Field applications of autonomous sailing robots;
• Robotic boats in teaching and education;
• Legal issues for autonomous vessels.

Dr. Antonio Carlos Domínguez Brito
Dr. Colin Sauze
Prof. Dr. José Carlos Alves
Guest Editor

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