Modeling and nonlinear heading control for sailing yachts

This paper presents a study on the development and testing of a model-based heading controller for a sailing yacht. Using Fossen's compact notation for marine vehicles, we first describe a nonlinear 4-DOF dynamic model for a sailing yacht, including roll. Starting from this model, we then design a nonlinear heading controller using the integrator backstepping method, which asymptotically stabilizes the system to the heading/yaw dynamics. Additionally, we present a few simulation results to illustrate the behavior of our control designs.