EeLsT: An Energy-Efficient Long-Short Term Approach for Sustainable Sailboat Autonomy in Disturbed Marine Environment

Abstract

Sailboats are purely wind-driven and thus have great potential for long-term voyaging. For robotic sailboats, the constraints on the energy are crucial to the sustainability of automation. Reducing the control frequency of actuators is crucial for energy conservation. This study proposes an energy-efficient long-short term (EeLsT) approach for sustainable sailing. Our approach can be generally applied as an energy management module in sailing robots. It explicitly leverages the sailing motion characteristics and the dynamic model of the robot considering marine disturbances. We have designed an experimental enhanced simulation platform to evaluate motion performance and energy consumption. Both baseline approach and the scheme incorporating EeLsT method have been conducted. In simulation, EeLsT approach saves 31.8% of energy. In the real marine environment, experiments are conducted with OceanVoy. The results show that 27.4% of the energy is saved during stable sailing. In the long-term sailing, compared to the standby mode when the motors are not working, the average power of the full automation mode has increased by no more than 1W, i.e. 4% relatively.