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Why We Need Autonomous Sailboats

Robotic vessels have similar potential applications to airborne drones, but they're not quite there yet.
Image: WRSC 2014

Driverless cars and aerial drones have rather stolen the limelight when it comes to autonomous vehicles. But a week-long event currently underway in Ireland shifts its gaze away from the roads and the air and onto the rippling waters around the coast of Galway, where its robotic focus is fixed on another type of unmanned machine: autonomous sailboats.

The seventh World Robotic Sailing Championship kicked off today, with a series of competitions set for the ten international teams. There are challenges to test their autonomous boats' ability to complete tasks like racing, sailing around markers, and avoiding collisions, although organiser Fearghal Morgan, an engineer at the National University of Ireland, Galway, told me on the phone that they looked set for a slow start; the weather was uncharacteristically calm. Even robo-boats need some wind in their sails.

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The United States Naval Academy's 'Seaquester.' Image: WRSC 2014

The point of the event, Morgan told me, was to bring the small but worldwide community working on this technology together. "The principle is to build boats that are autonomous and can move completely on their own, in wind, in a rough sea, and follow a certain path and meet certain goals," he said. There are no remote controls involved.

Sailboats between one and 2.5 metres in length will compete throughout the week, and what's most enticing about the designs is they generally look just like a regular sailboat, albeit sans sailors. There are also two motorboats taking part this year, and though they look a bit like dinky toys a design by ENSTA in Brittany, France, makes a pretty smooth beeline across a lake in this video showing off its object-tracking abilities.

ENSTA Bretagne's motorboat. Image: WRSC 2014

The potential applications of autonomous sailboats cross over broadly with those touted for drones: search and rescue missions, monitoring the environment, security, and so on. Robotic submarines are of course already used in various cases to give us eyes on the seabed, but there are definite advantages to having a robot boat on the surface, too.

For a start, a boat on the surface has a lot of useful resources at its disposal that a sub can't reach. It can pick up GPS, for instance, or make use of solar or wind power. Morgan said that the idea of collaboration between surface vessels and submarines was discussed at this year's Robotic Sailing Conference, held yesterday. "They don't compete," he said. "They're different technologies, and different applications."

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They do work, but it's a difficult environment

Additionally, tech developed to solve the engineering challenges of an autonomous boat could potentially filter down. A system that powers a sailboat using renewable energy, for instance, could feasibly shine a light on solutions for other long-range, carbon-neutral devices.

Image: WRSC 2014

I asked what stage autonomous sailboats had got to. "Well, they work," said Morgan. "They do work, but it's a difficult environment," he added, decrying the lack of breeze.

So far, the furthest an autonomous boat has travelled is just under 400km, after which it hit a fishing boat. That attempt was part of an ongoing and as-yet uncompleted mission to cross the Atlantic with full autonomy, known as the Microtransat Challenge. "Only then, I think, will this technology be shown to be robust enough to be useable," said Morgan.

For now, the participants are also trying to build their community, and are planning to develop a quick-start guide for others to get started building their own robotic boats. "This daunting task isn't maybe so daunting if people can say 'follow these steps' and you'll have gone through the principles and have something that you're proud of, and get a bit of a kick out of, and does it own thing," said Morgan.

For any drone enthusiasts looking to expand their horizons, perhaps the time will soon be right for a new hobbyist craze.