(8 Jul 2016) LEAD IN:
A team of engineering students from Vancouver on the west coast of Canada is hoping to sail into the history books.
They're launching an autonomous sailing ship to cross the Atlantic Ocean next month in a bid to become the first robotic vessel to complete the feat.
STORY-LINE:
It looks like any ordinary small boat, but this seafaring vessel has been designed to move and make decisions on its own.
An international team of student scientists is putting the finishing touches to the five and half (5.5) metre sailboat before its launch into the Atlantic Ocean next month.
Since the summer of 2013, the 68 members of the SailBot team at the University of British Columbia have designed and built the self-driving robot boat to push the boundaries of autonomous navigation.
A successful voyage would be groundbreaking.
When the boat sets sail, it'll undertake the 1800 mile (2900 km) journey from Newfoundland on the east coast of Canada to Ireland, and is designed to manoeuvre obstacles and react to the various dangers of the seas.
The team is confident that the sailboat is capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean without any human interaction. Although making the journey will be hazardous according to the team co-captain Kurtis Harms.
"Well we're crossing from Newfoundland to Ireland which is the north Atlantic which is one of the windiest, stormiest areas of the entire world. Many ships, big ships have sunk here before, dating hundreds of years. And we are having to avoid other freighters, shipping traffic, fishing boats, icebergs potentially, and we're designing the boat to sail in up to thirty, forty-knot winds. So yes it's a very perilous journey, we have spent a lot of time and thought into this making sure the boat can handle what we anticipate," he says.
The team has considered every possible scenario and has also faced unexpected challenges along the way - from concept and construction to performance and functionality.
Harms says they've tested the sailing characteristics of the boat on a continuous basis to keep making improvements.
"Well we've spent two and a half years designing and the building this boat but you can never know if your design actually works until you actually put it into the water and see it actually perform. And so the last few months have been instrumental for us in seeing small mistakes we've made, small improvements and on a weekly, and even daily basis, we come back from testing every day, say what can we do better, make the changes at night and the next day we take the boat out again and see those improvements and how they perform."
Following three successive first-place finishes in international sailboat regattas with smaller vessels, the crew's success provided the inspiration behind tackling this summer's more ambitious, trans-Atlantic challenge.
The autonomous boat will sail across the Atlantic Ocean by wind power alone. To complete the journey it'll use solar panels to power a number of onboard navigation and obstacle-avoidance technology, including GPS co-ordinates to steer around inclement weather and fishing zones and sensors to detect boat traffic and icebergs.
Vivian Cheung has project managed the venture and says the boat is exceptionally unique, to overcome the challenges posed by trans-ocean travel.
She explains that once the boat is about to launch, they will program the GPS co-ordinates and the vessel will then be able to pilot itself, navigating by itself with no intervention at all.
The aim of designing a lightweight boat has meant keeping onboard components to a minimum.
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