Protei sensors and actuators

     

The picture above shows the different sensors and actuators which are needed to sail a sailing vessel autonomously. Also is shown which principles are implemented by the Protei team already.

Actuators:

Protei focused mostly on the actuators, therefore almost all actuators are already present in the prototypes build by the community. We will not use the shape shifting hull in the design of our tool to test the intelligence, therefore the bow and stern steering meganism will not be present in our design and will be replaced by a more conventional rudder. Also the height of the sail is not adjustable in the protei prototypes so far. This is something which makes the durability of the sailing vessel better by being able to het zeil laten zakken during a storm. However we will probably not implement this in our prototype.

Sensors:

The protei community only build one prototype; protei_005.0 with working electronics, but this was a very small vessel which couldn’t really sail and because of this wasn’t really tested. In later prototypes only the GPS receiver was kept and the sailing vessel was completely remote controlled from ashore.

In this prototype we want to find out if a sailing vessel can autonomously sail, therefore sensors are needed to provide the system with the necessary information. Most of the sensors; GPS, wind speed and wind direction come very naturally. But along with these sensors also a gyroscope is necessary to know the angle of the sailing vessel with the water to be able to adjust the sails according to the weather conditions. The water depth sensor is another feature which is important to prevent collision with shallow waters, this can eventually be solved by using gps and waterdepth maps, but this needs investigation. Also there is a meganism necessary to measure how saturated the oil boom is, so the sailing vessel will know when to return to the mother ship and change the oil boom. This is also a feature which will probably not implemented in protei_009 which will only address intelligent sailing.