Sailing Robots To Attempt Atlantic Crossing 122
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Times of London reports that seven robotic craft will compete in a race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, 'Pinta the robot sailing boat,' has been designed at Aberystwyth University in Wales. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 7.4 kph). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. This 150-kilogram sailing robot costs only $4,900. The transatlantic race will start between September 29 and October 5, 2008 from Portugal. The winner will be the first boat to reach a finishing line between the northern tip of St. Lucia and the southern tip of Martinique in the Caribbean. Here are additional details and links."
how about something a bit simpler (Score:5, Interesting)
Robotics challenges are usually somehow tied to military objectives such as navigating a certain terrain, rarely do they focus on something constructive and creative.
Oh wait, another RP post...
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I'm going to learn whatever language Slash is written in just to tag all further Roland's stories with "ohnoitsroland", because that oh-so-helpful tag is so often forgotten.
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On top of that, if you consider the current role of the army as a nation builder, then it is also important that the military be creatively constructive.
"creative destruction"? (Score:1)
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no expert on robotics, but surely building a house is surely far harder than crossing the Atlantic for a robot?
Building a house requires all sorts of considerations about the land beneath it and requires a number of different skills.
Crossing the Atlantic requires going in a straight line for as long as possible.
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no expert on robotics, but surely building a house is surely far harder than crossing the Atlantic for a robot?
And yes, it is a little bit harder than crossing the Atlantic. But much more interesting (to me, anyway).
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I do not see that change any time soon - In the foreseeabe future building a house out of self-assembling robots will continue to be much much more expensive and resource-consuming than the regular way.
so, while those self-assembling robots may be more interesting (and much more complicated) than atlantic-crossi
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Funny)
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heck, even robots that build the whole house out of brick and mortar should be far easier to build and more economical than self-assembling robot bricks.
My point is that self-assembly is not relevant for house-building, robots may still be useful
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Informative)
You've also got to account for obstacles (admittedly not many) and currents (which could be very significant for such a small boat).
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Crossing the Atlantic requires going in a straight line for as long as possible.
Do you really know what you are talking about? Sure tacking into the wind requires a zigzag course, but with GPS navigation systems and good navigation software, this shouldn't be too hard. Even variables such as changes in wind direction and wind strength can be taken into account. As far as obstructions (even moving ones such as ships) can be handled with a radar system.
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Informative)
I maintain my original argument that you can't sail across the atlantic in a straight line, which was all that I was stating in my original post.
If you want to get really advanced, choosing the "optimal" course to sail along might actually be a fairly interesting problem to solve computationally, if you want to take meteorological data and forecasts into account, and update them along the way to choose the best course, while also avoiding lulls, obstacles and storms.
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Crossing the Atlantic requires going in a straight line for as long as possible.
I think only somebody who has spent a fair amount of time at the helm of a sailboat can truly appreciate just how complicated this is.
Winds vary to a great extent ... waves knock your bow from side-to-side (especially in a small craft, which this apparently is) ... currents can take you miles off course. The first two conditions can frequently require extremely quick and accurate responses to avoid capsizing - not so much w/ the currents of course.
Having an unmanned craft sail from Portugal to the
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These days, 36 foot is pretty much near the smaller end of the scale, but 90 foot is still awfully big to be considered the minimum size for the Atlantic.
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i know it can be done on much smaller boats.. but i wouldn't want to be the person doing it..
i have done my fair share of risky/stupid things.. time to take it easy for a while
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You can technically sail the ocean on a Pacific Seacraft Flicka 20. You probably won't enjoy the experience, but if you could substitute a robot for you, it should do just fine in such a boat.
One question I have about this is that I believe it has already been done. There are systems available now that integrate an autopilot with GPS and radar, and automatically sail a specific course until a specific position is reached, and then change course until th
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If you make the keel big and the sails small capsizing is a non-issue. I'm sure the boat was designed for stability NOT speed.
Bullshit. All they are doing is enter a co
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Also, having Bots build a house using alternative methods like the method described here [newscientist.com] or others would make the task much, much easier.
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
So if the defense department or the military will sponsor this, then its most likely to be something of use to them.
I think you should complain to construction or realestate companies,for not putting money into robotics.
The good part is that these things advance the state of robotics and will make a house building robot a little bit easier to design.
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Funny)
Anything about sailing is about money:
Definition of sailing: Sitting in a cold shower, ripping up $100 bills.
The fact they can get something with a sail to operate in anything larger than a bathtub for $4900 has me impressed!
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If you're willing to play races in modern plastic (GFK) boats, yes, you're right.
However, very many people have lived beautiful lives on boats. Poor people, with little money. Lovely steel long-keeled beauties of sailing ships.
I grew up on one in the atlantic, and we didn't exactly swim in money
Designing a sailing robot is a great idea, as sailing can be quite a bit more complex than you seem to think... and the little bots could
Re:how about something a bit simpler (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, I do see robotic ocean crossing as something useful and productive, but in addition, bear in mind that it is often the component parts that make real advancements in challenges like this. Power technology, navigation technology etc. Often the actual goal is secondary.
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Sounds like you've watched the SciFi channel too much. Robot builders does not mean lack of supervision. Nor does use of robots mean lack of general inspections. Frankly, human construction workers typically do piss-poor jobs in the first place until you are talking about high-end customer builders. For track homes, quality often barely able to pass inspe
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Most of these competitions end up with learning remote guidance. This type of tech is what will allow planes to land themselves if something goes wrong with the pilot. Will Allow a ship to return to harbor on it's own if something happens to the crew.
All of this is relatively new technology. Sure radio controlled planes are 70 years old, but it has only been in the past decade that a camera could be fitted onto them. The tech needs m
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In any case, if you want to make houses by robot, you're going to have to constrain the designs and materials used around robot-friendliness. Once you've done that, you might as we
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I really don't see the problem with robots building houses.
Have you ever been involved in a) robotics or b) house-building? Combining robots' limited capacity for detecting and dealing with "messy" and unpredictable situations with the reality of putting things together outside of pristine, well-supervised factory conditions is not going to work out all that well, at least with the current levels of technology.
Besides, for the $1 million (+interest, maintenance, fuel) your house-building robot costs you, you can purchase an awful lot of labor that will do the sam
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What runs through my mind here is a new form of battle bot -
General_Contractor_bot: "Where the hell is the Framing_bot?"
Electrician_bot: BEEP! "Don't kn
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Link to book "Modular Mansions" on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Modular-Mansions-Sheri-Koones/dp/1586857126 [amazon.com]
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Also, since you have ideas for better robots, why don't you get off your ass and build one yourself?
Seriously, this "meh, I could've done better" post is very typical, yet very arrogant.
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How could we ever use this technology for non military purposes? Well let's see - most of the world's food supplies are delivered via the ocean. How's that for a start?
Most of the world's food supplies are transported on container ships, which are too large to move by sail - although there is at least one company selling helper sails which are basically big chute/kites, and which only work with a following wind.
It might be an effective strategy for cargoes which need to arrive quickly, but don't actually need to arrive at all - I'm thinking military payloads. Because then you can basically just launch a fleet of torpedo-equipped passive sonar-searching sailboats and le
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The kites operate at anything up to 50 degrees to the wind, and are controlled by computer.
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for one I don't spend much time on my ass, rather the opposite, I wished there was more time in a day so I could get more work done. This post was actually made between cutting a bunch of grooves in brickwork, the dust needs to settle...
Second, a house building robot is one of my pet ideas and I've been mulling over the more complicated parts (raw materials delivery, on the spot mixing and curing of concrete, avoiding the fouling of the mechanisms and suc
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Usually raw materials of some form or other are already present at the prospective building site.
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So navigation is a military technology? Of course warships have to be capable of navigation, but that's kind of like saying that because infantrymen must walk long distances, hiking is a form of military training. Nowhere in the article does it say this is a DARPA project...but even if they were kicking in some money, remember that your abili
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Robotics challenges are usually somehow tied to military objectives such as navigating a certain terrain, rarely do they focus on something constructive and creative.
Humans are much, much cheaper and easier to program than robots. You can hire illegal immigrants that can barely speak your language, yet they'd know enough to ask the going rate to mow your yard/clean your house or whatever and can find your home on a set schedule. I'd love a robo
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We might have to go back to more local economies that are less specialized if we don't find a cheap way move stuff.
Well this could be it. Sailing is pretty cost effective energy wise, but its SLOW, maybe 10 knots for a larger cargo vessal. People don't want to be at sea for months crossing the Oce
The Pinta??? (Score:2)
Natives are done for (Score:5, Funny)
If the white men hadn't done enough to the natives already... well then the coming robotic horde will mop up the rest. To all my indigenious friends out there, they say they come in peace now, but remember the last time you heard that.
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Re:Natives are done for (Score:4, Funny)
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Wouldn't it be...
I, for one, welcome our new robotic sailing overlords.
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Not as difficult as the DARPA Grand Nationals? (Score:1)
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I hardly know much about sailing other than history interest in sail travel during the 1500's through the 1700's and from my understanding sail travel is quite difficult compared to your standard propeller travel.
Especially if the wind is blowing the the opposite direction you want to go. One of the key inventions that did allow travel between Europe and the new world was the triangular sail which mitigates the issue by allowi
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Tacking is actually two-fluid sailing, which implies that you need a sail in both fluids (and, obviously, a velocity difference between them also). Of course, with the density of water, the wet-sail doesn't need to be nearly as large as the air-sail, and with small enough boats, the hull itself acts as a fairly inefficient keel.
You do need to be able to rotate the sails, b
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I say old boy... (Score:2, Offtopic)
You mean "The UK national paper 'The Times'".
There's more to the UK than Buckingham Palace, tea at the Savoy, Harrods and and Big Ben, Mr P.
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Re:I say old boy... (Score:5, Funny)
Mind you, I hear rumour that the poor old buyer mistakenly thought he was getting our dear Tower Bridge.
Silly Sausage.
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I've also met several people who thought New York was just the city; couldn't convince them that Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester were also New York. *sigh*
And (Score:2)
It's a bit small! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's a bit small! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:It's a bit small! (Score:5, Insightful)
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A boat that size usually depends upon the weight of its crew to keep it balanced. Similarly, unless it's got an absolutely immense keel, it can easily tip over into the water.
In the event that the boat completely inverts itself, which is fairly likely because the weight of the sails and mast often account for a considerable portion of the weight of the craft, it could become virtually impossible for the boat to "right itself". Also remember that the sails generate a good
Re:It's a bit small! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, building self-righting / uncapsizable boats is pretty straightforward. Remember that the keel needs to be heavy enough to offset the tipping moment of the sails; normally this means they're really, really heavy. Also remember that the keel is submerged in water, which means that its effective weight is rather lower than it would be in air.
With a bit of forethought, you end up with a boat which will tip over until the keel starts coming out of the water, and then it'll just stop --- any additional heel will cause more keel to emerge, which will cause the effective weight of the keel to increase hugely, which will prevent any further heeling.
Even if by some miracle you do end up with the boat upside down, it's unstable in that attitude and will right itself. Yes, the sails will cause huge water resistance, but that resistance is proportional to the speed of motion through the water; it won't stop the self-righting, it'll just cause it to happen slowly. (Also, the sails will act to prevent the capsize in the first place, for exactly the same reason.)
What tends to happen these days on decently designed boats is knock-down; a gust of wind causes the boat to be knocked onto its side, up to the point where the keel's righting moment offsets the tipping moment of the wind against the sail. This can be very hazardous to the crew, but hey, no crew! When the gust passes, the boat will right itself (usually even if it's filled with water).
The biggest risk is that all this process is extremely violent; the boat's being slammed about hugely. You run a very real risk of bits of the boat actually breaking. The tension at the base of the mast is huge at the best of times, and if the mast breaks under strain and doesn't come completely free of the boat it can very easily smash through the bottom of the hull. Which Would Be Bad. That's one of the reasons why people like unstayed masts these days; if you get dismasted, you don't end up with a huge, heavy, sodden and very dangerous lump of stuff smashing about on top of your boat --- you're much more likely to lose it completely overboard. Much safer.
While this does tend to apply to yachts rather than dinghies, which as you say largely use humans for ballast, you really do get yachts that size --- the difference is largely design rather than size. My father designed, built and sailed a highly successful yacht only a little bigger --- 15 feet, I believe. It was a bilge keel gaff rig with two monster lumps of concrete for the keel, and slept three. It would heel comfortably to about 45 degrees and then just stop. My father tried quite hard on several occasions to get the cabin windows in the water (much to my horror) and failed every time...
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My main gripe still is, though, that these boats don't look quite big or heavy enough to have a keel big enough to do what you're describing.
You're also absolutely right about bits of the boat breaking under stress. A few months ago, I saw a big gust break one of the stays off of a Firefly, subsequently causing the mast to snap in half, under what were otherwise fairly reasonable conditions. This is particularly notable, considering that Fireflies have a fai
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A few years ago, when I was more into sailing, I thought of a RC model of a yacht with all the stuff like setting & adjusting sails, balancing, steering, done via small RC engines... Well, it was just a thought, but all seemed reasonable and doable.
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Re:It's a bit small! (Score:5, Interesting)
And with a smaller boat you can easily build an almost unsinkable craft if you use a sandwich-type hull filled with enough floatation material so that even if the hull is completly waterfilled the boat will not sink. This was what Sven Yrvind used in some of his constructions ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Yrvind [wikipedia.org] )
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Whalesong? (Score:2, Funny)
Call me pedantic if you like, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Call me even more pedantic if you like, but... (Score:1)
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Got to go to a tropical island for three months (Score:5, Funny)
Cheap booze, great weather, women in bikinis and no threats from the druids... brilliant.
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Really, I though that there were only two places in the UK like that, Scotland and England. Maybe Wales as well. And most of the time Ireland.
Oh well, i should be happy, we had one week of summer this year, a record I hear!
Back to the story, this is a great idea. If they find someone to power themselves, you have loads of drones in the ocean, monitoring ocean currents, as well as a border patrol (great
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The professor involved did spend most of a year sailing around the Carribean a few years ago, so you might not be far from the truth there
I've heard it's undergone some considerable testing, so would hope it'll at least get half way (a bit like Beagle the space ship thing)
Beagle B robotic boat (Score:2)
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at maximum speed? (Score:2)
Why always at maximum speed? Does the switch only have two positions - 0, and maximum?
The size of the boat may be a hinderance... (Score:2, Informative)
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scooner (Score:2)
Durgs and stuff.... (Score:1)
What about liability? (Score:1, Interesting)
Good Luck! (Score:2)
Good Luck!!
prepareToBoardArrrr() (Score:2)
And how long before the pirates relaunch some of those captured robot boats back at us, with that interaction HW designed as a new defacto industry standard, regardless of any ISO specs?
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In fact this "SF movi
Sailing (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the aspects I love about sailing, is the challenge of dealing with dozens of inputs (wind direction, wind speed, boat heel, current, etc.) and controls. Most people don't realize the level of detail with which one can adjust a sail. While airplanes are stuck with a fixed aerofoil, sails can be adjusted by stretching the front (luff), the back (leach), the bottom (the foot). You control these three sides with the halliard (raises the sail), downhaul (pulls down on the sail, easier to tighten the luff after the sail has been raised), outhaul (tightens the foot), leech line (tightens the leech/back of the sail), boom vang (pulls down on the bottom of the sail). With these, you can set the depth and shape of the sail to accommodate the current wind. (Heavier winds work better with flatter sails, lighter winds, with a bit fuller sails.) And of course you have to keep the proper angle of the sail with the wind by using the mainsheet, traveller, vang.
It really is a thing of beauty to get a sail working properly; then you combine that with a foresail (jib) that helps the flow over the set of sails. (There are often bits of yarn, ticklers, that help you see the flow over the sails, and see if it's laminar or turbulent.)
All that being said, pretty much every one of these many factors could be measured, analyzed, and appropriately adjusted by a computer and associated sensing/control hardware. And in some ways, seeing a system manage all those factors so accurately and elegantly is a bit of art in itself.
And there very few dangerous situations (wind coming around behind to flip the sail over in a crash jibe) that the computer and sensors could spot and deal with before they become a problem.
The main thing the computer lacks is the ability to appreciate the water rushing by the hull, the seabirds, the seals, the beauty.
It is still a worthwhile endeavor. Plus, the technology from such projects could filter down into products for sailors, who might be unable or unwilling to deal with a lot of the details. A lot of cruising sailors would love to have their sails trimmed properly by a computer. More power to them. It's not for me, I want to tweak every bit of the boat myself, for the joy of it; but if someone (including myself at times) wants to kick back and relax, while still having the boat perform, sure, let the computers do some work.