WATCH: A team of UBC students is about to try something no one has been able to do before: navigate a sailboat across the Atlantic ocean – only this time they won’t actually be on the boat. Catherine Urquhart reports.
Students from the University of British Columbia hope their robotic sailboat becomes the first to ever cross the Atlantic Ocean by itself.
“A number of teams have tried it now. None of them have succeeded. We think it would be a great accomplishment to do it,” says Dave Thiessen, the mechanical lead on the team.
Thiessen is one of many engineering and computer science students who are building a 5.5 metre-long “sailbot” for the task. They’ve built smaller boats in the past, and have won the International Robotoic Sailing Regatta three years running, but they know this is an entirely new challenge.
“We’re not allowed to change anything. Once the boat sails, it’s completely on its own. If there are decisions that have to be made, the boat has to make it itself,” says Thiessen.
Recent months have been full of planning for any situation that could happen.
“We’re going to have one satellite on board…that will be transmitting information back,” says Josh Andrews, an engineering student involved in the project.
“If there’s a big weather storm, or a weird object it detects, it should send back an image or it could send back information about what it sees…if one system fails, they’ll be another system that will take over for the previous one.”
They’re planning on launching the boat off the coast of Newfoundland in August. The project will cost about $60,000 and the trip will take 14 days.