Good article in The Economist on the need for Robotboats

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15009907

Test of MkII A Robotboat 24 July 2009, north of Ocean City NJ

The test was mostly successful. The boat was sailing into the wind trying to make the waypoints. It made waypoint 0 and 1 but did not attain 2. After attainment of 1 the boat was twoed back to shore with the kayak.

The tide was going out in an easterly direction at about 2 Km/hr. (not helpful!)

The wind and boat speed are shown.

The test took about 1.5 hours from off the truck to back on.

-WH

Planning a big test

Last weekend I looked at launch spots in New Haven Connecticut (USA). The 30 mile route would be almost due south to the north shore of Long Island, NY. The advantage of this test is that its fairly hard to lose the boat to the open ocean and I can take the ferry (from Bridgeport) to meet the boat on Long Island.

Test of MkIIA at Bellehaven Marina, VA

I did the first water test of the MkIIA robotboat. It sailed well until it ran into a small island. The wind changed and the boat was trying to tack. The tack led straight for the island. Other wise quite successful.

-WH

Progress on controls

For the MkII A (the yellow robotboat), I am using a netbook with Labview (National Instruments). This is very power inefficient for operational boats, but it is fantastic for de-bugging and operating a prototype. Most of our tests lasted much less than the 12 hour life of the MkIIA, so power efficiency is not important right now. Being able to enable and dis-able subsystems is very useful in de-bugging the code. Labview is robotic control for dummies.

The MkIIA is an upgrade of the MkII. I tested the MkIIA successfully in the parking lot next to AMS in Silver Spring MD

-WH

The latest test

We tested the boat in the water on 22 March 2009 on the Potomac River in Woodbridge, VA (USA)

We are a company

We incorporated our endeavor as Autonomous Marine Systems (AMS) this week. We intend to produce advanced robotic boats for the global oceanographic surveillance market.

Recently we developed some more sophisticated manufacturing techniques for the boat. The most exciting of these is the use of 3D printing to make the hulls and sails. This new manufacturing technique allows us to also "print in" the major elements of the control actuators (sail and rudder). The values of this are lower manufacturing costs and better performance.