Yang Shaolong, Liu Chuan, Liu Ya, An Jinxin, Xiang Xianbo
School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Hubei Key Laboratory of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering Hydrodynamics, School of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Front Robot AI. 2021 Mar 11;8:630081. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2021.630081. eCollection 2021.
Over the past two decades, scholars developed various unmanned sailboat platforms, but most of them have specialized designs and controllers. Whereas these robotic sailboats have good performance with open-source designs, it is actually hard for interested researchers or fans to follow and make their own sailboats with these open-source designs. Thus, in this paper, a generic and flexible unmanned sailboat platform with easy access to the hardware and software architectures is designed and tested. The commonly used 1-m class RC racing sailboat was employed to install Pixhawk V2.4.8, Arduino Mega 2,560, GPS module M8N, custom-designed wind direction sensor, and wireless 433 Mhz telegram. The widely used open-source hardware modules were selected to keep reliable and low-cost hardware setup to emphasize the generality and feasibility of the unmanned sailboat platform. In software architecture, the Pixhawk V2.4.8 provided reliable states' feedback. The Arduino Mega 2,560 received estimated states from Pixhawk V2.4.8 and the wind vane sensor, and then controlled servo actuators of rudder and sail using simplified algorithms. Due to the complexity of introducing robot operating system and its packages, we designed a generic but real-time software architecture just using Arduino Mega 2,560. A suitable line-of-sight guidance strategy and PID-based controllers were used to let the autonomous sailboat sail at user-defined waypoints. Field tests validated the sailing performance in facing WRSC challenges. Results of fleet race, station keeping, and area scanning proved that our design and algorithms could control the 1-m class RC sailboat with acceptable accuracy. The proposed design and algorithms contributed to developing educational, low-cost, micro class autonomous sailboats with accessible, generic, and flexible hardware and software. Besides, our sailboat platform also facilitates readers to develop similar sailboats with more focus on their missions.
在过去二十年中，学者们开发了各种无人帆船平台，但其中大多数都有专门的设计和控制器。尽管这些机器人帆船的开源设计具有良好的性能，但对于感兴趣的研究人员或爱好者来说，要按照这些开源设计来仿制并制造自己的帆船实际上却很困难。因此，本文设计并测试了一种通用且灵活的无人帆船平台，该平台的硬件和软件架构易于获取。选用了常用的1米级遥控帆船来安装Pixhawk V2.4.8、Arduino Mega 2560、GPS模块M8N、定制的风向传感器以及无线433兆赫通信模块。选择了广泛使用的开源硬件模块，以保持可靠且低成本的硬件设置，从而突出无人帆船平台的通用性和可行性。在软件架构方面，Pixhawk V2.4.8提供可靠的状态反馈。Arduino Mega 2560接收来自Pixhawk V2.4.8和风向标传感器的估计状态，然后使用简化算法控制舵和帆的伺服执行器。由于引入机器人操作系统及其软件包的复杂性，我们仅使用Arduino Mega 2560设计了一种通用但实时的软件架构。采用了合适的视线引导策略和基于PID的控制器，以使自主帆船按照用户定义的航路点航行。现场测试验证了在面对世界遥控帆船锦标赛（WRSC）挑战时的航行性能。舰队竞赛、定点保持和区域扫描的结果证明，我们的设计和算法能够以可接受的精度控制1米级遥控帆船。所提出的设计和算法有助于开发具有可访问、通用且灵活的硬件和软件的教育型、低成本微型自主帆船。此外，我们的帆船平台还便于读者开发更专注于其任务的类似帆船。
