Saildrone: autonomous sailing craft with instruments for collecting data

techxplore.com

45 points·dnetesn··5 comments

Sort of sailing enhusiast here. Not surprised that they are trimarans, but surprised they are so small. AFAIK anything under 30 feet is a poor choice in many common ocean wave conditions. Self-righting is a nice feature if you can get it, but these things look like they would topple fairly easily even if they have a heavy keel, with no way to self-right.

(Update: Watched the video, which shows a diagram of the boat and its sensors and explains that the keel has a 250lb (113kg) instrument at the bottom)

According to this NYT article[1] the Saildrone is self-righting. There may also be some hollow space in the upper portion of the mast to prevent it from turtling, like how a Hobie Cat has the mast-blimp.

>Underneath the boat are both a rudder to aid in steering and a keel, which will right the boat if it is knocked over.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/technology/no-sailors-nee...

How do we avoid them while sailing? Does it have AIS? Standard port/stardboard lights? Aft lights? the mast looks low for reliable light or radio signal.

I've always wanted to make an open source autonomous watercraft to collect data. I also think some open source uplink buoys would be sweet. Then your craft could offload lots of data to them (which would be pushed to the internet) instead of paying for satellite time or trying to coordinate picking up your craft manually.

A CSIRO news article:

https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2018/New-course-s...

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