Journey to I2C GPS
Redesigning the mast electronics, meant at the same time adressing an issue from the past. Up until now, the GPS was wired through its Serial port, but this ...
Helming node: some sailing knowledge inside a robot
In this blog we often talk about our hardware, electronic, lake and sea test etc. But we don’t talk about software very often, so today we will present a new...
Connecting the WiFi dongle
As discussed in a previous article on the blog, connecting the WiFi dongle, situated on the top of the mast, to the Raspberry Pi, inside the hull of the boat...
I2C on the mast
Together with the new design of the wind vane, we decided to redesign the wiring between the electronics situated on the mast (IMU, GPS and Wifi) and the Ras...
Calibrating the compass wirelessly with USB/IP
With the switch to the XSens IMU last year came a new challenge. To calibrate the magnetometer on the XSens, we use the graphical ‘magnetic field mapper’ pro...
Wind vane design
We are currently looking to redesign our wind vane for many reasons. Firstly, we are looking into smaller sailing robots, called footies, which require a muc...
WRSC 2018 in Southampton
Every year the World Robotic Championship is held in a different place, after traveling to Portugal in 2016 and Norway in 2017, this year we won’t have to fl...
Sailing Robot 2018 - New team leader looking for new team members!
We are happy to announce that the sailing robot team has unanimously chosen the new team leader for this year: Sebastien! Some might remember our team member...
WRSC 2017: Victory
With day four of the competition came the obstacle avoidance challenge. The Black Python first needed to sail back and forth inside a 150 m by 20 m rectangul...
WRSC 2017 Day 3 - Area scanning
It was raining before we left our hotel in the morning, and we were already quite wet when we reached the competition venue. We were very grateful to our hos...
WRSC 2017 Day 2 - Station keeping
It sounds like a joke, but for a small boat in a big sea, staying in one place is no simple matter. So for the second challenge, we had to stay as close as p...
WRSC 2017 Day 1 - Fleet Race
Greetings from Horten, Norway!
1st Sea Test 2017 Testing the Xsens MTi3
Last Sunday, the 6th of August, marked 2017’s first sea test. It’s high time the Black Python tasted the saltwater once again! This time around, we got our h...
Finding needles in a data haystack
Every time our robotic boat, the Black Python, goes out on the water, it’s recording data so that we can study what it was doing later on. The most important...
Team Meeting 16th May 2017
Hello once again! Here is a little update on how things are getting on over at SotonSailBoat HQ.
Let`s launch again, like we did last summer
With the weather being lovely and warm, we were looking forwards to our first test day at a lake, trying to see if our good old Black Python was still a sea ...
Is sailing the past, or the future? (Science fair pt. 2)
This was a particularly interesting question we were asked at the science fair: “Isn’t sailing old hat?” It’s easy to think about the Golden Age of Sail in t...
Mechanical sailing for the win!
If you have been following our blog posts over the last years, you will know: Software is full of errors and waterproofing electronics is a pain! We are exci...
We got a lot of interesting questions at the science day! (Part 1)
Last Saturday we took part in the University Science Day. After the towing tank tour we had activities for children and grown ups. During the day around 800 ...
Sailing Robot team present at Portsmouth linux user group
Today, our team members went to Portsmouth Linux user group meeting and presented our project there.
Team Meeting 14th February 2017
Today’s meeting started with a general discussion and continued with some work.
We're officially sailing under MIT licence!
In the spirit of the physical cleanup a few weeks ago, at our first Saturday meeting we dedicated ourselves to some tasks we had in the back of our minds and...
Team Meeting 2nd February 2017
Today’s meeting was spent on discussions on some pretty important events for the team.
New Year - time to clean up our inventory
With the new year, it was about time to go through all the things we had collected over the year 2016. We found some last leftover water damaged electronics,...
Team Meeting 24th November 2016
During our most recent team meeting (held at Boldrewood) we discussed our ‘physical’ plans for the boats. Various issues were discussed, mainly centered arou...
Sailing Robot Extravaganza Part II
Everyone liked Part I? Yeah? Good, knew you would.
A Word of Thanks
With all the celebrations (and organisational tasks for the immediate future of the society) done and dusted, we feel it is high time we wrote a little token...
Sailing Robot Extravaganza Part I
Don’t forget, introduction meeting’s tomorrow evening (page link as a little reminder ;): FaceBook Event)
Friday - Obstacle Avoidance
Final challenge of the competition - make runs up and down a rectangular pathway in the water. At the third or fourth run, orange buoys will be placed in the...
Thursday - Area Scanning
Welcome to Part I of the two-part series called ‘The Report on the Final Two Days of Portugal that are Way Long Overdue’.
We Won!
That’s right. No kidding. We are officially the champions for 2016’s World Robotic Sailing Championship (microsailboat class)! And at our very first try no l...
Wednesday - Station Keeping
Today was station keeping. The goal for today is: make your boat stay as close to a single point as possible for five minutes. The average of 95% of points c...
Tuesday - First Race (Fleet Race)
D-day
Monday -Prep day
7:30 in the morning, we got up for breakfast, and then headed off to the sailing club. We begin setting up our stuff. Indoors, the software team code their c...
Sunday - Getting to Portugal
The week has finally arrived - we’re flying to Portugal today! We arrived at uni at 10 in the morning, to give ourselves a healthy three hours to pack everyt...
Test day 24th of July
We got a new boat! It’s called the Black Python. Because it’s white.
The Challenges of Building a Sailing Robot
The big difference between a sailing robot and practically every other kind of moving robot is this: the sailing robot can’t just move in whatever direction ...
Test day 17th of July
The weather today was a much greater improvement from that of our last test! Verily, the weather gods were all “we’re sorry about last time” and blessed us w...
Test day 3rd of July
Today on the 3rd of July, we held another water test. The weather today was probably not the most ideal; though it was bright, there was a constant drizzle a...
Team Introduction: Sébastien
A former Intern at FSI, Sébastien although was only in Southampton for a short time, made and is still making an enormous contribution to the team. He is alr...
How autonomous is the robot?
We got an interesting question in our fundraising campaign, so we’d like to share the answer with everyone! Tim Miller, commodore of the Walnut Valley Sailin...
We made the funding! Many thanks to all our supporters!
First of all, thank you:
Team Introduction: Pier
Pier is a Ship Science student, and currently a summer intern in FSI, working on a Raspberry Pi ROV - his experience from our team will surely come in handy ...
First Autonomous Sailing
This Saturday was a very exciting day for us: We finally put all our electronics on a boat and let it go!
Remote Controlled Sailing Practice
As part of the rules, we have to be able to remote control our boat for emergency collision avoidance. So, in addition to writing the software to sail the bo...
All the blinking lights
We were so focused on our tests last Wednesday, that we completely forgot about time and ended up testing until almost 11 pm. We took our Landyacht MacGyver ...
Two things can prevent us from sailing at WRSC2016...
One is completely out of our hand, but the other you can help us prevent! If the weather is not with us, we can have the perfect boat, but it will not sail w...
QUIZ: What is wrong in this picture?
Isn’t the undisturbed water of this lake in Southampton common a beautiful, calming view?
Team Introduction: Tony
Tony is the leader of our hardware team. He is in charge of the lower lever electronics, coordinating who works on which system, designing the sensors and ge...
What are the challenges in building a sailing robot?
For sailing, a human is needed to plan the route, sense the direction of the wind and control the sail and the rudder accordingly. Our sailing robot team re...
Team Introduction: Sophia
Since we are asking you to fund our team going to the World Robotic Sailing Championship, it is about time we start introducing our team members!
Crowdfunding!
Our Sailing Robot team is raising funds to send the team to Portugal and compete in WRSC2016 this September!
Dry Land Test 2
On Saturday (30th of May) we had our 2nd Dry Land Test. Our motto of the day: Check lists are very important and helpful!! They identify what needs assemblin...
The Team
What are Dry Land Tests? And Why?
Before launching our boat in water, we decided to run some tests outside, in the open space on Boldrewood campus. During our dry land test this weekend, we w...
Micro-sailboat class update
The rules are not yet out, but there has been an interesting update to the competition website: Instead of up to 1 m, now boat up to 1.5 m are included in th...
First Dryland Test
Whilst planning for our upcoming second Dryland test (on the 30th of April), we just rediscovered some photos from our first dry land test at the start of Ma...
Open Source in Open Waters
As a team we decided to make all our work available on Github. This actually means that all other teams can see our code. A regular question we get is: What ...
Science Day, 12.3.16
On Saturday, our team had a stand in the Science and Engineering Day.Over 5000 people registered for the event, so it was a very busy and long day, but we ha...
Science Week Fair!
Come to our stand at the Science and Engineering Day at the University of Southampton tomorrow (Saturday, 12.3.16)!
Southampton Sailing Robot Team got new website
Today we have our new website for public communication.