The first robot was built in late 2004/early 2005. It was inteneded to prove the concept of a sailing robot and develop some initial control systems which formed my final year major project in my MEng degree. Photos are available in my photos section. Videos can be seen in the videos section.
Features:
- Plastic hull, approx 1.5m long
- 1m deep keel
- 1.2m high aluminium wing sail, controlled with a standard electric motor.
- Single rudder controlled with a servo from a radio control kit.
- CMPS03 compass
- Wind vane connected to a potentiometer to form a wind direction indicator
- Basic Stamp microcontroller and HP Jornada 720 PDA.
Problems with this design
- Single sail didn't result in stable sailing.
- Keel area was too small causing very rapid turns.
- Basic Stamp / Jornada combination wasn't fast enough to react to changes in heading and wind direction.
- The sail rotation was also too slow and inaccurate.
- Compass errors caused by tilting caused the boat to turn incorrectly. Massive oscilations in heading can be seen in the video of this boat sailing.
- No GPS, this prototype could only sail a pre-determined compass heading.