A Systems Engineering Approach to the Development of an Autonomous Sailing Vessel
Over the past four years, undergraduate students in the Systems Engineering degree program at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) have pursued autonomous sailboat systems development as part of their required capstone project in conjunction with students from the Naval Architecture program that design and fabricate the vessels. In this paper, we discuss the pedagogy of robotic sailing as a capstone for Systems Engineering students and discuss our approach to interdisciplinary tasks such as this. We also outline the design philosophy associated with the systems side of the equation, focusing on the on-board instrumentation and control hardware.