Simulated environment for performance evaluation of control systems for autonomous sailboats
Mobile robotics, PID controllers, ROS, USV, ASV
In this work we propose a methodology for performance estimation and comparison of control systems for autonomous sailboats. One of the biggest problems in mobile robotics research is the absence of standard tools and platforms for distribution/verification of implementations and results. Our approach consists of an framework for performance evaluation build with the middleware ROS and divided in three components: simulator, scenario and metrics. The simulator should be modular, easy to install and distribute and accurately represent the sailboat movement by modeling wind, waves and water currents. The scenario should represent situations that happen during sailboat missions such as keep the sailboat close to a desired waypoint (virtual anchoring), docking and tracking. Quantitative metrics should be extracted by simulated experiments in the scenario and should be used to evaluate characteristics expected from control systems such as stability, energy consumption, robustness and efficiency, resulting in an initial classification of the control system.