Mechanism Development and Heading Control of Catamaran-type Sail Drone

: The need for energy harvesting in marine environments is gradually increasing owing to the energy limitation of marine robots. To address this problem, a catamaran-type sail drone (CSD), which can harvest marine energies such as wind and solar, was proposed in a previous study. However, it was designed and manufactured without considering the stability, optimal hull-form, and maintenance. To resolve these problems, a CSD with two keels, a performance estimator, V-shape hulls, and modularized components is proposed and its mechanism is developed in this study. To verify the performance of the CSD, the performance estimation using smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and the heading control using fuzzy logic controller (FLC) are performed. Simulation results show the attitude stability of the CSD and the experimental results show the straight path of the CSD according to wind conditions. Therefore, the CSD has potential applications as an energy harvesting system.