Coverage Path Planning for Autonomous Sailboats in Inhomogeneous and Time-Varying Oceans: A Spatiotemporal Optimization Approach

Autonomous sailboats are well suited for long-duration ocean observation due to their wind-driven endurance. However, their performance is highly anisotropic and strongly influenced by inhomogeneous and time-varying wind and current fields, limiting the effectiveness of existing coverage methods such as boustrophedon sweeping. Planning under these environmental and maneuvering constraints remains underexplored. This paper presents a spatiotemporal coverage path planning framework tailored to autonomous sailboats, combining (1) topology-based morphological constraints in the spatial domain to promote compact and continuous coverage, and (2) forecast-aware look-ahead planning in the temporal domain to anticipate environmental evolution and enable foresighted decision-making. Simulations conducted under stochastic inhomogeneous and time-varying ocean environments, including scenarios with partial directional accessibility, demonstrate that the proposed method generates efficient and feasible coverage paths where traditional strategies often fail. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first dedicated solution to the coverage path planning problem for autonomous sailboats operating in inhomogeneous and time-varying ocean environments, establishing a foundation for future cooperative multi-sailboat coverage.