The world robotic sailing championship, a competition to stimulate the development of autonomous sailboats

The WRSC (World Robotic Sailing Championship) / IRSC (International Robotic Sailing Conference) is an international and annual competition and conference that aims at stimulating the development of autonomous marine robotics and its applications. The competition, originally designed for sailboats, is also opened to motorboats as a separate category since 2013. In this paper, we will present the competition through the example of the 2013 edition, and show its results, specificities, issues as well as improvements for the next editions.