Sailing Robots To Attempt Atlantic Crossing

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."

Comments

how about something a bit simpler

[jacquesm]

Like a robot that builds a house or so. A bit more useful too...

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...

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Military applications can be considered "creative destruction", so it's not all mindless stuff.

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.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[MagdJTK]

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

[HateBreeder]

It's all about money, right?

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

[MichaelSmith]

I'm no expert on robotics, but surely building a house is surely far harder than crossing the Atlantic for a robot?

You should google around for fractal robots. Imagine lego blocks which are also robots. You broadcast a plan to the blocks, perhaps directly from a CAD desktop, and they self assemble into the intended object.

And yes, it is a little bit harder than crossing the Atlantic. But much more interesting (to me, anyway).

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[D-Cypell]

Building a house easier for a robot than crossing the atlantic? I have my doubts about that, even if you mean 'low grade' housing for use in the third world. Also, if a robot fails a sinks halfway across the atlantic, a few students get disappointed. If a robot fails, and the house it built a few days earlier falls and kills the family living inside, the implications are orders of magnitude more severe.

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.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[moosesocks]

Crossing the Atlantic requires going in a straight line for as long as possible. Not if you're sailing against the wind for at least part of the time.

You've also got to account for obstacles (admittedly not many) and currents (which could be very significant for such a small boat).

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[mshmgi]

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 Caribbean is more complicated than landing an unmanned craft on Mars. Once you leave the Earth's atmosphere, it's pretty much smooth sailing the whole way.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[e2d2]

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?

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.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[GooberToo]

If a robot fails, and the house it built a few days earlier falls and kills the family living inside, the implications are orders of magnitude more severe.

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 inspection, and that assumes it is actually inspected. Chances are far higher even a poor robotic worker will increase quality a factor of ten or more.

Don't forget, your typical track builder is using illegal workers, workers that are drunk, workers that are high, workers that are more involved in dealing out the back of their truck, if they show up at all, or workers that dropped out of school in the fifth grade. Often, the hardest part of getting a house built, is simply getting workers to show up on time, sober, and ready to work.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[ColdWetDog]

It's all about money, right?

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!

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[ColdWetDog]

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.

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 know, go find him yourself you mindless droid!"
General_Contractor_bot: "Call me a droid, will you?!"

(Sparks fly)
Meanwhile Plumbing_bot runs in circles because it talks only in ObjectiveC and doesn't understand anyone else. Besides, it doesn't want to get dirty.

I think this sort of thing would be the most likely scenario..

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[Ulven]

If you're talking about Beluga Skysails, they can definitely operate under a wider range of conditions than you say.

The kites operate at anything up to 50 degrees to the wind, and are controlled by computer.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[Em Adespoton]

On the other hand, this would make remodeling MUCH easier :) Just hope your house doesn't get a virus while you're taking a shower.

Re:how about something a bit simpler

[moosesocks]

Do you really know what you are talking about? Yes, I do know what I'm talking about, and agree that these might not necessarily be huge difficulties to overcome.

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.

Natives are done for

[explosivejared]

Hmmm... historic trans-Atlantic journey by sea. Seems history is repeating itself.

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.

Re:Natives are done for

[jellomizer]

I for one welcome our new Robotic overlords.

It's a bit small!

[Chief Wongoller]

This boat is only 3.65 meters long - that's a mere twelve feet, which is smaller than many dingies I have sailed. Normally sailing craft have to be much bigger to withstand the ferocity of ocean winds and waves,which simply swamp craft of this size. So how can it possibly stay afloat for several months?

Re:It's a bit small!

[MichaelSmith]

This boat is only 3.65 meters long - that's a mere twelve feet, which is smaller than many dingies I have sailed. Normally sailing craft have to be much bigger to withstand the ferocity of ocean winds and waves,which simply swamp craft of this size. So how can it possibly stay afloat for several months? Exactly like a submarine (or a shipping container).

Re:It's a bit small!

[ZorbaTHut]

If it's buoyant, watertight, and has an appropriate center of gravity, then it'll usually right itself if it capsizes. If it's equipped with some device to "flip it over" on the off chance that it doesn't do so automatically, it could easily make it the entire way - the only risk would be damage from storms or running out of power.

Re:It's a bit small!

[moosesocks]

Not necessarily if it's a sailboat.

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 deal of underwater "resistance" that make it even more difficult to right the boat.

Re:It's a bit small!

[david.given]

Not necessarily if it's a sailboat. 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.

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...

Re:It's a bit small!

[KokorHekkus]

Actually, if it's smaller it can propably withstand the ocean forces more easily in most cases since there will be less chance of the forces finding something in the construction that will provide leverage. Just take a pencil hold it with your fingertips at the end and snap it off, it should be pretty easy for most people. Then try doing the same thing to an inch long pencil stump.

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 )

Re:It's a bit small!

[ChrisA90278]

Yes it's a small boat but it does not have to cary humans so it does not ned things like companionway hatches, food and water. The boat I'd image would be completly sealed and heavy blasted with lead acid batteries. I imagine the boats will be self righting. If I were designing them they's have rigid sails, more like an airplane wing than a sail. A boat like that simply coud not turn upside down

Whalesong?

[Goffee71]

Hopefully the robo-boat will be sung at by whales, learn their language and spread a message of peace and hope for mankind, while sending a signal into space for the whale's ancestors to pick them up. At which point the military will step in and blow it to bits. Now here's Larry with the Sport

Call me pedantic if you like, but...

[Apatharch]

According to the Times article there are actually eight robotic craft competing - the Pinta and seven others.

Got to go to a tropical island for three months

[MosesJones]

Now that is genius. Aber for anyone who doesn't know is one of the coldest, wettest, windiest and bleakest places in the UK, its okay in the summer but these students and their prof have just come up with a reason to be on a tropical island for three months "you never know when it might actually arrive".

Cheap booze, great weather, women in bikinis and no threats from the druids... brilliant.

Re:Call me even more pedantic if you like, but...

[anno1602]

To take the pedantry to its logical conlusion: Propulsion itself will be by wind power, but the power adjust the sail(s?) and for the computer will come from the solar panels.

Re:I say old boy...

[Linker3000]

Indeed old chap - we let you have the old one.

Mind you, I hear rumour that the poor old buyer mistakenly thought he was getting our dear Tower Bridge.

Silly Sausage.

The size of the boat may be a hinderance...

[misterthirsty]

but it should not adversely affect the ability of these boats to do a trans Atlantic crossing. Modern designs of sailboats are self righting, and there are several historical examples of small boats crossing large area's of water. Lt. Bligh of the Mutiny on the Bounty fame sailed about 3600 nautical miles in an open boat, the Polynesian Islanders have been doing this for centuries, and some guy recently crossed the Atlantic in a boat the size of a bath tub. Here is a pretty good list of small boats going long distances in open ocean.

As for these boats being robotic, I think it is a great test of ingenuity, combining modern technology with the oldest and most time tested form of long distance travel. I would only worry about one of these things being run down by a freighter or similarly large vessel, as a human presence on board is the best way to avoid collisions at sea...

Re:Not as difficult as the DARPA Grand Nationals?

[zippthorne]

It is not the triangular sail (fore and aft rigging, really, regardless of sail shape) which allows you to travel up wind, but the keel.

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, but square-rigged vessels are perfectly capable of this, albeit not necessarily to the degree that a Bermuda-rigged sloop would be able to.

Sailing

[PhotoGuy]

I love sailing. I find it to almost be an art, managing the interactions of the wind and the water to make a vehicle move, while watching for the best route (especially when racing), managing and training the crew, and enjoying the splendor all around you.

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.