Robotic sailing boat is on Atlantic mission
The first attempted crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a robotic sailing boat is underway. Pinta, a three-metre robotic sailing boat developed by a team of scientists at the Department of Computer Science at Aberystwyth University, was launched off the coast of County Kerry in Ireland on Saturday. Based on the popular Topper Taz sailing boat, Pinta is the brainchild of robot scientist and sailing enthusiast Dr Mark Neal and bears the name of one of the ships used by Christopher Columbus for his first crossing of the Atlantic in 1492. However, the modern day Pinta has little if anything in common with its illustrious predecessor and features a Gumstix computer, solar panels, around 30kg of batteries, a sail winch, tiller actuator and a 25kg keel bulb. The launch is part of The Microtransat Challenge ( http://www.microtransat.org ) which aims to stimulate the development of robotic sailing boats by challenging teams to build a completely autonomous boat and control system capable of saili...