Reactive path planning for autonomous sailboat using an omni-directional camera for obstacle detection

Unmanned autonomous vehicles have the potential to operate for extended periods of time in different environments like in the air or the sea. These environments are often complex and arise many challenges for the unmanned vehicles research. The ASAROME project (Autonomous Sailing Robot for Oceanographic Measurements) is focused on an autonomous sailboat to make measurements and observations in the marine environment for long term. This paper describes a routing strategy for obstacle avoidance using an omni-directional camera based obstacle detection. Experiments with a panoramic vision system and sailboat simulation results have shown the expected performances for obstacle detection and avoidance.