World Robotic Sailing Championship Starts in Portugal

The ASV Roboat from Austria. Source: InnoC.

Only unmanned, totally autonomous boats up to 4m in length are allowed entry into the competition which is organized into a series of regattas and sailing maneuvers. The International Robotic Sailing Conference will be held parallel to the event.

Among the participants will be the successful Austrian team, their preparations for the competition are documented in a diary. Their Roboat, run by the Austrian Company for Innovative Computer Sciences is the current world champion after winning the robot sailing championships on the Neusiedler Lake in eastern Austria in May 2008. Once fed with finish-line coordinates, the ASV boat uses weather data to compute the route, trim sails and perform required maneuvers.

Linux is also being used by the Swiss student team Segeln Autonom, (Sailing Autonomous) from the ETH Autonomous Systems Lab in Zurich, the (FASTt team from Portugal's Porto University and the entrants from the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. A full list of competitors can be found here.