Line following for an autonomous sailboat using potential fields method

Artificial potential fields method is a widely used algorithm for path planning of autonomous terrestrial robots. In this paper, this method is applied for the local path planning of an autonomous sailboat robot. Environment and specific sailboat navigation constraints (upwind and downwind no-go zones) are represented by local potentials built around the boat location and periodically updated to take into account changes of the wind direction and obstacles´ position. A line of sight (LOS) based potential is used to guarantee that the vehicle stays inside a band around the direct route between two consecutive way points. A new repulsive potential with a speed-dependent component is also presented in order to get smoother obstacle avoidance trajectories.