Self-Stabilizing Boat’s Deck Is Always Flat, Even in Rough Waters | Hacker News Reader

Self-Stabilizing Boat’s Deck Is Always Flat, Even in Rough Waters

wired.com

57 pointswiwiw28 comments

Pretty cool. When I saw the headline, I expected a boat hull filled with some sort of lubricant and another hull inside, containing the "actual boat," such that the "actual boat" would always be level. In terms of form, this would be similar to a Double Boiler (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain-marie). I always assumed that this would be how to stabilize objects like this. It's interesting to see it done in a different way. I wouldn't have imagined such a design. With the lifted body and the long legs, it vaguely reminds me of a waterbug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerridae).

Gyroscope stabilized boats exist. "Seakeeper is the world leader in active stabilization for the marine industry Now available for boats 30’ and above." $30k for their smallest unit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNJ88mBusbE

Reminds me of the Bose active suspension system for automobiles:

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/automotive/bose_suspensi...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8sVDenpPOE

IIRC, the major difficulty with commercialization was gov't regulations?

The inventor, David Hall, is an interesting guy. He started off making subwoofers and among other things he invented the 3D Lidar system used by the winners (and second place) of the DARPA Urban Challenge. Also used in the Google self driving car.

I met him at the first DARPA challenge. Before he did the Lidar thing he had an interesting realtime stereo vision system powered by DSPs. I'd say he's a modern day Edison in his tenacity when it comes to solving problems.

Edison? you mean he has a team of engineers that invent stuff for him? and all he does is slap his name on their creations?

Wow. I never realized Velodyne (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velodyne_Inc.) was a family-owned, 90-employee operation. Somehow I assumed the world's most sophisticated lidar maker would be a bigger company.

There are a lot of people talking about sea sickness but the reality is that sea sickness is usually a bigger problem standing still rather than moving. I could see some applications for bay usage, I would be pretty scared in the open ocean.

> I could see some applications for bay usage, I would be pretty scared in the open ocean.

I had exactly the same reaction: how sea-worthy is this going to be in something bigger than small chop? I'm not sure I'd trust the design for that serious offshore work, though for a pleasure craft it looks aces.

It depends if you're trying to maximize top speed. For racing applications, the hull's re-entry (whether nose first or transom first) greatly affects running speed. For catamarans and v-bottom boats alike, a flat water re-entry is the fastest.

Finally someone put a suspension system into a boat. This has been a long requested feature and it ~100,000 years for someone it implement this.

Boats have been around since prehistoric times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-rolling_gyro

Pretty cool. If the thing could carry a single car, and the system would allow one to lower the center section so that one could drive on and drive off, I could see it as an interesting addition to cross bay traffic. Going 30 knots on the water straight from the say Moffet to the Embarcadero in SF could conceivably be faster than trying to navigate it that way by freeway.

Related, although a different use case: http://www.ampelmann.nl/

i'm reminded of the perhaps more impressive 'ghost':

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-21/juliet-marin...

Made by another serial inventor, Gregory Sancoff. Must be something about water that attracts inventors (and billionaires).

Got me looking at impressive boats. This team broke the record at 65.45kts over 500m. Ride looks pretty rough.

http://www.sailrocket.com/node/674

Exposed moving parts and salt water: Perfect bedfellows...

Not a lot moreso than you'd see in a hovercraft, which are currently used in some jurisdictions (including locally where I live) for the kind of rescue work this technology is initially aimed at.

It's actually a pretty clever example of disruptive tech: it does almost everything a hovercraft does but is far closer to conventional tech and will likely be cheaper and lower maintenance.

Hovercraft don't have too many exposed moving parts. Just the two (or one) main rotors which also generate lift in most designs.

One of the reasons cited for hovercraft disappearing from many applications is the increased maintenance costs relative to normal ferries.

Externally this thing has far more mechanical joints than a hovercraft. The skirt on a hovercraft is just rubber-like material bolted together, there are no moving parts in there, it just inflates (and, yes, salt does eat away at it badly).

Salt can and does get brought down into the hovercraft but it shouldn't get brought into the engine directly.

Your average roll on ferry has loads of exposed moving mechanical joints. Just look at the loading ramps. http://s3.freefoto.com/images/2026/49/2026_49_11_web.jpg

Because that combination hasn't ever come up in any other application?

So they call it "The Martini"?

I'm going to guess whomever named it was thinking it would be "shaken, not stirred."

> Martini: a boat that rides so smoothly, no wave will spill your cocktail.

It kind of looks like there is a Velodyne LIDAR on the roof.

The "Even in Rough Waters" claim seems exaggerated.

The system is the work of David Hall, the engineer who founded Velodyne Acoustics in 1983 and invented an accelerometer-based servo system to control the movement of the cones used in subwoofers. In 2005, Hall developed the Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) system now used by Google’s self-driving cars to map the physical world. Not long after that, he moved on to the idea of the Martini: a boat that rides so smoothly, no wave will spill your cocktail.

I had this idea when I was like 6 or 7. Seems like it's always gonna be more trouble than it's worth.

Has someone invented a rigid deck? Or is "horizontal" too many syllables?

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