By robotic sailing we mean that the whole process of sailing boat navigation is performed by an autonomously acting system of
technical devices. Bowditch (2010) defines navigation as “the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or
vehicle from one place to another”. Robotic sailing boats therefore have to perform the complex planning and manoeuvres of
sailing fully automatically and without human assistance. Starting off by calculating an optimum route based on weather data
and going on to independent tacking1 and jibing2 and avoiding collisions, stand-alone sailing boats are able to sail safely and
reliably through to any and every destination. The human being merely has to enter the destination co-ordinates. The key
characteristics of a robotic sailing boat can be summarized as follows: