• autonomous marine vehicle
• autonomous model sailboat
• embedded control
• MPC
• tack maneuver
• upwind sailing

The purpose of this thesis is to develop navigation and control strategies for an autonomous sailing model boat. Autonomous sailboats are good candidates both for long term oceanic surveys and for patrolling and stealth operations, since they use wind power as their main mean of propulsion which ensures low power requirements, a minimal acoustic signature and a relatively small detectable body. Controlling a sailboat, however, is not an easy task due to high variability in wind, side drift of the boat and challenges encountered when attempting to traverse an upwind course. In this thesis, we describe how we design and set up a control architecture that al- lows Aeolus, an autonomous model sailboat provided by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, ETH, to sail upwind and execute fast and smooth tacking maneuvers. We implemented different controllers to actuate the rudder in upwind sailing while tacking. We present experimental results obtained during several autonomous sailing tests conducted at Lake Zurich, Switzerland.