Our Research & Insights

Vessel Technology

By Dermot Tynan • March 19, 2013

There will be at least two Vcc busses on board. Labeled, oddly enough, as Vcc1 and Vcc2. The difference between them is that Vcc1 is always on, at all times, and Vcc2 (through VccN) are selectable by Igor.

The main processor runs off Vcc2, but Igor (and Otto) both run off Vcc1. In situations where voltage levels are critical, Vcc2 will be switched off and the boat will continue on whatever course had previously been set, until either voltage levels are healthy, the specified "wake-up" time has elapsed, or there are critical issues which require Mother to get involved. A critical situation could be something like a dramatic wind shift, or an error such as a mis-reading from a sensor.

AI & Autonomy

By Dermot Tynan • March 16, 2013

So, as I mentioned, the virtual boat was too eager to tack. If you're dead downwind of the mark, and you set off on a starboard tack, within a metre of being on the left-hand side of the course, the other tack is favoured.

I added code that essentially stated "unless the other tack is at least five degrees better than the existing one, ignore it." So, if I'm at 44 degrees TWA and the other tack is better by a degree (-43 say), stay where you are. This works quite nicely. If you look at the plotted course, it shows the boat sailing nice upwind legs, to the waypoint. As Henry would say, "it's sailing up the ladder."

Vessel Technology

By Dermot Tynan • March 7, 2013

Even before a boat is built, the designers can predict how fast it will go at various sail angles. Using this information, they can make modifications to the hull to suit the type of sailing. For example, if an around-the-world race looks like it will see a lot of downwind sailing, it's possible to optimise the downwind performance, and run test simulations with the boat, before ever committing to fibreglass.

The standard mechanism for displaying this information is a polar curve. Because the boat should sail at the same speed on either tack, only one side is shown. Essentially, a polar curve allows the designer (and the boat owner) to predict the hull speed for a particular true wind angle and strength. In the example above (courtesy of SailOnline.org), you'll notice that the boats fastest speed is at a true wind angle of about 120 degrees. In the case of a 30 knot breeze (the red line), the boat should get over nine knots through the water. At TWA's of twenty degrees and less, the boat will stop, regardless of the wind speed.

AI & Autonomy

By Dermot Tynan • March 1, 2013

Looking at the upper-level navigation software introduces some particularly interesting questions. The low-level software will keep the boat on a TWA, or true wind angle. Technically, it's an apparent wind angle, but that's ok.

The upper level has to decide what is the best TWA. To do this, it has the current position of the boat and the position of the next waypoint. It also knows the current TWA and the compass heading. Without bogging down in the maths, it can compute the distance and bearing to the next waypoint using something called a Haversin algorithm. Given the current TWA and the heading, it can determine the wind direction. We can compute the VMG or "velocity made good" for each new heading possibility, based on the predicted Polar (more on that anon). So, we can see that a particular heading is the best course to get us as fast as possible to the next mark. All of this is standard stuff, and is used on sailboat race courses every day.

Vessel Technology

By Dermot Tynan • February 26, 2013

The Kalopa motor control board was designed as a general-purpose Atmel board with ancillary electronics for a wide variety of purposes. It includes two H-Bridge motor controllers, driven by two 16 bit PWM outputs. You can exchange one of the motor controllers for an 8-channel servo controller, also using one of the PWM outputs. It has a standard RS232 port with an RJ45 connector on the end. There is a MAX232 to convert logic levels to proper RS232 voltages. If you want to use radio control, you can instead populate the board with an R5-434 radio receiver. It will listen for data on 434MHz and feed it to the Atmel. The processor itself is the bog-standard Atmel ATmega8 with 8k of code and about 512 bytes of RAM.