AES Boat Project

Paul Baxter, Naisan Benatar, Jenny Owen, Omer Qadir, Pitiwut Teerakittikul.

Project Outline

Make the boat maintain a heading i.e. make sure it's always pointing in the right

direction Performance metric: minimise cumulative

heading error over a 5 minute experiment.

Why a Sailing Boat?

Power efficiency Free, renewable energy

Hence increased longevity (in theory...) Good for repetitive tasks like oceanography. More interesting than a Pioneer

The Boat

The Boat

no rudder!

only two sails...

Drive System

Actual HeadingActual Heading

Actual HeadingActual HeadingDesired HeadingDesired Heading

Desired Sail Desired Sail AngleAngle

WindWind

11

22

11

22d

f

SafeSafe SafeSafe

Wind DirectionWind Direction

Hardware

Software

Endocrine Systems

They are good for fault tolerance... Negative Feedback loops

Environmental Hormones are released which cause suppression

or excitation of competing systems (motors in our case)

Problems Encountered

• Hardware problems – Wind sensor & GPS not operational.

• Sensor Resolution

• Inexperience with Sailing terminology & operation of sailing boats

• Two Sail boats (i.e. no rudder) harder to control

Robot in Action

Results

0 50 100 150 200 250 300-250

-200

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

Theta_e over time

reading number

Th

eta

_e

(d

eg

)

Doctored Results...

0 50 100 150 200 250 300-80

-60

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

Theta_e (without erroneous data)

reading number

Th

eta

_e

(d

eg

)

Main Achievements

• Control System does seem to improve boat sailing performance

• Achieved familiarity with sailing terms and operation of boats

• Have a good framework to build on for future work

Work in Progress

• Optimising P Values in increase accuracy of responses

• Implementing complete hormone release and response

– Hormone release regulated by motor “health”

– Hormone response intended to cause other motor to compensate

– Hormones for regulating other sensors.

Future Work

• More reliable hardware platform

• Wind Sensor, and GPS accuracy improvements

• Expand Hormonal regulation system

• Improved error prediction & event response

• Onboard power generation

Acknowledgements

• Martin Huelse for Organisation

• Mark Neal for idea inspiration

• Colin for PIC code

Things to take to AIR

• Frisbee

• Study boots, walking sticks etc. for hill climbing

• Laptop with Linux, wifi and a good battery.

• Jet pack

• Hearty appetite

• coffee

Thanks

• Any Questions?