Trans-Atlantic Robots

An anonymous reader writes "In the summer of 2008, teams from a host of countries will compete in The Microtransat Challenge with the hope of gaining the honor of having built the first autonomous sailboat to cross the Atlantic. The results of Microtransat 2007, a smaller scale preliminary race, were recently announced. The winner was the team from Austria; team RoBoat, for having completed 24 hours of autonomous sailing. I am strongly considering joining this competition before the year is out, and would appreciate any insight from the Slashdot community. The boats can be up to 4 meters in length, and therefore capable of carrying a full-sized onboard computer (operating system of your choice). Time is limited however, so I would like to avoid as many hardware issues as possible and get straight to the difficult problem of writing the AI. So how would you design a seamless interface between sensors and actuators to the high-level code?"

Mythical Man Month

[yamamushi]

I'd do it one weekend, in assembly, on paper.

And it would probably compile in one shot.

Well, DUH!

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing I would do to get a leg up in the competition would be to post the question to a technology website that garners millions of hits a day - a website that, more than likely, most of the robot boat-building teams are familiar with. That way, no one but me would have access to collective thoughts of hundreds of brainstormers.

approach

[belmolis]

I couldn't help noticing that the rules forbid interference with other boats' electronic equipment and colliding with other boats, but say nothing about the use of, say, cannon. :)

Re:Don't know what you'll choose

[deniable]

Until someone gets to the Blue Waters of Death. Even better, this gives someone a chance to pirate Windows for real.

Re:approach

[Rakishi]

Well they may consider the cannot round to be part of the boat thus it hitting another boat being a "collision." On the bright side even if you do get disqualified for such an act the DARPA grant you'll get soon afterwards will probably be worth more than the competition prize.

Re:An OS for your system?

[greenguy]

Oh, sure, Linux can handle a USB port. But can it handle a USB starboard?

If it requires a driver and a Linux driver is available

Didn't you RTFS? It has to be autonomous. That means no driver.

Use VISTA

[RSA7474]

Just convert all the hardware devices to be USB portable into your CPU and plug-in-play should work seamlessly, and because VISTA is so bloated it will definitely stay afloat.

Re:approach

[Xeirxes]

Forty years later, the ocean is still overrun by four-meter long robotic attack ships, who refuse to allow any ship passage.