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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
 
image image image image image

 

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 would suggest to switch to an E-Ink display - this will be more visible in daylight and lower power.

    Another suggestion is to improve the onboard power systems as mentioned by . Starting with a solar panel. Maybe a solar powered Qi charging station so it can be totally waterproof. This means any battery powered devices would also need a wireless charging coil inside. The power management system could keep track of (and display) the state of charge of all devices and estimated run time, even if the a wired solution is chosen. Depending on solar power availability the electronic systems could automatically switch to power saving modes - at night for example. Display backlights could be voice or button activated at night.

    A barometer was not mentioned, but presumably that is already a necessary instrument. The barometric pressure could be displayed with all the other weather and nautical info.

    It might be useful to have some control functions under optional voice control in case he is busy with something when controls or autopilot settings need to be changed.

  • in reply to dougw

    Do you work forward or backward to determine the power capacity? I have this many electronics, I need this reserve. This is the power capacity required or I have this much power and this much reserve, spend wisely on electronics.

    I accept power consumption is an important criterion for selecting electronics but it can't be the deciding factor. You could create a system that is extremely power conservative but then the sailor has to scale the mast to take readings because wifi is too expensive in terms of power, which is costly. You could have a hold full of batteries with a generator for the game night but the boat rides pretty low.

    I have had clients that insist on doing something a particular way but after discussion of the downsides, the upside doesn't look as good anymore. Not being a sailor and understanding the nuances of being on a vessel with minimal support makes it difficult to manage the risk.

    Very interesting academic exercise but someone is going to have to live with the decisions.

  • in reply to colporteur

    Sometimes power is the deciding factor depending upon the application/usage of the product. In fact, when it comes to wireless solutions, link budget is also very common. There are not just university exam questions but are also very important and common while designing a project that has to be implemented in the real world. Any commercial product undergoes power budget, link budget (if it offers wireless connectivity) and reliability testing along with EMI/EMC. Keeping the advanced stuff like EMI/EMC out of the picture, I think it's always better to calculate the power requirements of our own project so that we can predict the time for which the project can be powered on at s limited battery supply. Or at times, batteries are only available in certain fixed capacities, so once can also predict how much of capacity is needed to run your project say for 10-12 hours in single charge. It's upto the designer if he wants to keep the battery capacity fixed and then go about the design or design first then decide the battery capacity accordingly.

Comment
  • in reply to colporteur

    Sometimes power is the deciding factor depending upon the application/usage of the product. In fact, when it comes to wireless solutions, link budget is also very common. There are not just university exam questions but are also very important and common while designing a project that has to be implemented in the real world. Any commercial product undergoes power budget, link budget (if it offers wireless connectivity) and reliability testing along with EMI/EMC. Keeping the advanced stuff like EMI/EMC out of the picture, I think it's always better to calculate the power requirements of our own project so that we can predict the time for which the project can be powered on at s limited battery supply. Or at times, batteries are only available in certain fixed capacities, so once can also predict how much of capacity is needed to run your project say for 10-12 hours in single charge. It's upto the designer if he wants to keep the battery capacity fixed and then go about the design or design first then decide the battery capacity accordingly.

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