Development of a measurement and autonomous control system for wave-powered boats

In this paper, we present the development of a measurement system and a control system for autonomous wave-powered boats. Wave-powered boats are useful tools for long-term observations in the ocean because they absorb energy directly from ocean waves. One of the authors has designed and developed wave-powered boats and one of them succeeded in long voyage from Hawaii to Japan (7800 [km]) in 2008. Here, we focus on autonomous control and experimental data acquisition for wave-powered boats. To achieve this purpose, we have developed a measurement system, an autonomous control system and a monitoring system. Preliminary experiments were performed on land and in a bay area in order to test the performance of the developed systems. From the experiments, the measurement system collected data from multiple sensors mounted on a testbed wave-powered boat, the control system moved the testbed boat toward a desirable waypoint, and the monitoring system allowed users to remotely monitor the realtime state of the boat.