On motion planning for point-to-point maneuvers for a class of sailing vehicles (Q763127)

Summary: Despite their interesting dynamic and controllability properties, sailing vehicles have not been much studied in the control community. In this paper, we investigate motion planning of such vehicles. Starting from a simple dynamic model of sailing vessels in one dimension, this paper first considers their associated controllability issues, with the so-called no-sailing zone as a starting point, and it links them with a motion planning strategy using two-point boundary value problems as the main mathematical tool. This perspective is then expanded to do point-to-point maneuvers of sailing vehicles in the plane, that is, automatic path generation combined with computation of control input profiles. Simulations are presented to illustrate the potential of the approach.