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Sailing Auto Pilot - Competition - Ready For Tomorrow 2022

Farnell partners with sailor Alberto Riva to redevelop a Nautical Autopilot image

Alberto Riva is a multi-competition winning skipper who always had a passion for sailing since he was a child.

With the support of many different sponsors, he has sailed on a variety of boats from smaller centreboard boats to 70ft long flying trimarans, on board of which he competed many different regattas.i

He now has an eye on a new dream: the Mini Transat - a 4050 nautical miles solo race on the smallest offshore racing boats at only 6.50m long. A challenge that requires not only competence and resilience, but also a sound mind.

Far from being only a sailing passionate and competitor, indeed, Alberto is also a trained engineer who worked as data analyst and on-board electronics expert for the preparation of other racing boats. With a master in nanotechnologies, he also developed an auto-pilot board during his studies

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The auto-pilot is an element that he defines “his best friend” during sailing, as it allows him to leave the wheel and rest or focus on weather conditions especially on demanding regattas like the Transat, where one-person sailing and no phone/computer or technical support aside from tracking are the main requirements.

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Interface for AutoPilot 

In light of all the characteristics that distinguish this challenge, such as passion, determination, performance, resilience and technology, Farnell decided to partner with Alberto and help him by opening the project up to our open-source design community to redesign his autopilot. As technologies develop further and faster, we are confident that our electronics enthusiasts could highly improve it to achieve higher performances with better cost efficiency.

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Among the improvements Alberto would add, he would certainly focus on changing the current screen (which was an additional cost on the overall system) in favour of taking advantage of new smart phone technologies. Connecting a smart phone to the automatic navigation system could allow to cut a big part of development and budget effort, as it would allow to use the embedded characteristics of modern displays such as waterproofness and mechanical resistance, and make it further flexible and efficient.

Join Alberto in his challenge!

Auto Pilot Components

What do you need for a boat to sail its self? 

The autopilot is made by two parts: The data acquisition and the control part.
Several sensor are connected to the system to perform the vectorial calculation of the wind and gain information about the heading of the boat: IMU compass, wind sensor, boat speed sensor and a rudder sensor.

The calculated variables are used to keep the boat on a particular true wind angle or on a particular course. Two nested PID controllers allow the boat to keep the desired route moving the rudder through a linear actuator.

The first PID calculates the desired rudder angle. The second PID, thanks to the rudder angle sensor feedback, drives the motor of the actuator to the desired rudder angle.

The first controller can be set to follow a particular reference: TWA (True Wind Angle), AWA (Apparent Wind Angle), Internal Gyro Compass (preferred choice), Fixed Rudder Angle (debugging purpose).

 

Ancient mariners would tie the rudder with a rope but this could run them into rocks in their sleep. 
Alberto has used electronics to monitor the wind, position and control it all with an Arduino 

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Components 

Learn more about the components used in this build

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Arduino Max232 Driver Interface 12v-5v DC to DC Converter H-Bridge Motor Drivers Resistors 

Arduino

 Driver Interfaces DC to DC Converters Motor Drivers Resistors

Are you ready for Tomorrow? 

Competition

Global Competition
Winner
 		 Australia and New Zealand
Winner
 

India
Winner
 

 Greater China
(China, Taiwan, Hong Kong)
Closed

 ASEAN
(Singapore, Malaysia, Phillipines, Vietnam, Thailand) + Korea
Winner
 
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Enter our "Ready for Tomorrow" competition for a chance to win a prize from our prize pool

Multicomp Pro Handheld Oscilloscope - Hand Held Oscilloscope
Multicomp Pro PC USB Oscilloscope - USB Oscilloscope
Multicomp Pro Soldering Station - Soldering Station

Mulitcomp Pro Handheld Multimeter - Multimeter


Details of your answers and contact details can be shared with element14 Avnet Group

 

Parents

  • I have never participated in a solo sailing race, but I can imagine one of the most challenging tasks is to take under controls the rudder while, for example, you are busy trimming the jib sail, which is in front of the yawl. For this reason, a useful feature could be the ability to change heading though gesture. The idea is to build a waterproof bracelet equipped with one of the many Arduino platforms with integrated IMU and BLE peripherals. The one I personally prefer is the Nicla Sense ME. which has the plus that can be powered with a Lipo battery with no extra hardware. The bracelet will be able to recognize three basic gestures

    • circle hand to the right: correct heading 1 degree to the right
    • circle hand to the left: correct heading 1 degree to the left
    • move hand back and forth: set course to the direction the hand is moving along
    • imageimageimage
  • in reply to amgalbu

    If I'm not wrong, the commands from the wearable will be sent wirelessly to the main unit. I would avoid any wireless component while building a critical system such as autopilot. There are multiple things that could go wrong with wireless systems, latency is one example, if there's a delay in the command being received by the autopilot, it could be a danger. Another is the gesture itself, the boat is not so steady in the water, this will lead to false gestures and will send false commands to the auto pilot. There all always be drawbacks to any system, but I liked your solution, it's innovative.

Comment
  • in reply to amgalbu

    If I'm not wrong, the commands from the wearable will be sent wirelessly to the main unit. I would avoid any wireless component while building a critical system such as autopilot. There are multiple things that could go wrong with wireless systems, latency is one example, if there's a delay in the command being received by the autopilot, it could be a danger. Another is the gesture itself, the boat is not so steady in the water, this will lead to false gestures and will send false commands to the auto pilot. There all always be drawbacks to any system, but I liked your solution, it's innovative.

Children
  • in reply to rsjawale24

    The mayor players in autopilot systems have the option to add a remote control. There are also man overboard systems on the market. However non of those systems are combined into one system and integrated with the autopilot in case of emergency. The systems on the market always assume more people on the ship. So the man overboard system would only alert the other members of the crew. In case of a crew of one this is a problem.

    I'm a solo sailor and was planning to build something like this. But for myself I was planing a more low tech approach, like a automatic switch in the life line. If a pull of over 90Kg is put on the life line put the boat in "bijliggen". However most skippers die not wearing a life line. In a simple way as taking a *** overboard in calm seas. The blood pressure drops at the relieving, and the brain shuts down for a moment and overboard you go. I broke my back while doing this alone on a boat on calm water, no joke. I fell backwards and survived. However getting to the vhf with a broken back to send a distress is no fun. I would have loved to have a device on my belt to sound every alarm on the boat at that time.

  • in reply to rsjawale24

    Hi . Thanks for your comment. Since Alberto was going to user a smartphone to remotely control the autopilot, I thought to exploit the same wireless communication channel (I proposed BLE, but wifi is fine too) to send route adjustment commands. I don't think this is a safety-critical application: this is just a "gadget" to make sailing more efficient by letting the sailor react faster to changes in wind direction. If a gesture is not detected or there are delays in communication, the boat will simply maintain the current route and the worst that can happen is that you have to reach the autopilot and change the course using the local commands. On the contrary, a wireless man overboard device is a safety-critical device and, as, such, should be properly engineered and validated. Finally, I proposed gestures because a gesture requires just one hand. This means, for example, that you can change course while operating a winch