Sailing with medium rig

Sailing with new rig

Today we had a very nice on-water testing session with the all new medium size rig for Thunderbird 2012. This rig will be ideal for less-than-perfect wind conditions, but today showed that it can also handle a little wind very nicely. We further worked on the PID, though we most likely will need at least another session to fully complete this work. Getting the PID testing is pretty important so that the boat can maneuverer most effectively.

Also notice that the rig today have the sponsors for this years UBC SailBot team. We could not do this project without their support!

In the last boat construction session we worked on installing the new turnbuckles for the shrouds on Thunderbird 2012. The old turnbuckles proved to be way to small and hard to work with, especially since we have interchangeable sails and we want to switch quickly between them. All the way from Great Britain the new turnbuckles came, bigger and more robust than the old ones. We even got some color on them, red on port side and green on starboard side!

Old turnbuckles

New turnbuckles.

 

PID Testing

Click on image for high quality version.

Don, Dave Cramb, Ryan, and David were out on Monday testing the boat and latest GUI code. We were able to send instructions to the boat to take a target heading and then graph the response of the boat.  The y-axis (delta) is the difference between the current heading and the target heading. The GUI could graph the response in real time, allowing us to get instant feedback on the performance of the boat. It was good to have Ryan there as he has more experience tuning PID loops and was able to offer some tips.

We experimented changing the PID values and the rudder limit to try and make the response quicker and reduce overshoot. Unfortunately the wind died down during the middle of our test session so we weren’t able to complete testing. We did learn that removing the rudder limit lead to unpredictable responses, and settled on a a limit of 15-20 as suitable. We also have determined that we likely don’t need the D (derivative) term in the PID loop and that a PI controller will likely suffice.  We will experiment with different values of P and I on friday if the weather cooperates.
All in all, the boat is performing very well already, and tuning the PID is going to perfect the responsiveness of the steering.

Testing with onboard camera

GoPro camera mounted on Thunderbird 2012.

Beautiful Day On-Water Testing

Greg launching Thunderbird 2012 for the day

GUI development with David Lee and John

Don with Thunderbird 2012

Setting Sails Videos

Thunderbird 2012 in action:

Setting sails

First on-water testing with Thunderbird 2012

The on-water testing for Thunderbird 2012 has begun as of Monday March 19. This week we got two full on-water testing sessions. These testing sessions starting up now, and lasting until the competition starts, is the most crucial part of the year because now is the time we optimize and implement the programming we have been working on. It will give us enough time to be ready to take the Sailbot competition to a new level.

Programming hut

Adrian, Michael, and Greg

Thunderbird 2012 unveiled

Team in front of Thunderbird 2012

Today marks a big day for UBC SailBot as the Thunderbird 2012 is finally ready for on-water testing. Even though we have gotten far since September, the most important path is ahead. These next weeks and months up to the competition we need to extensively test our all new Thunderbird 2012 platform to make sure we will be successful in the competition in June.

Thank you to all the people who came out today to the unveiling of UBC SailBots newest boat, the Thunderbird 2012.

Thunderbird 2012

Painted!

Thunderbird 2012 painted

Ladies and Gentlemen, behold the Thunderbird 2012 sailbot back from painting. It’s white, and it looks amazing!

From now on it’s going to be a lot of small things being fixed so that the boat is ready for the competition in June. This includes getting ready all the sails, the keel, and bulb. We have made the Thunderbird 2012 so that it will be able to sail with the 2011 keel, bulb, and sails. Even though the old components are not tailored towards the new boat, we can use them for the initial on-water testing of the Thunderbird 2012, which eases the boat construction teams job a little.

Unfortunately, we had an issue with the connection for the GPS inside the boat shortly after it returning from painting. Some of the pins in the connection seemed to be bent, a very big problem since the placement of this connection is very hard to get to inside the boat. Luckily, Mike had a great idea of using the iPhone Facetime feature to videocall his computer for us to look at the problem inside the boat. After hours of “boat surgery”, Mike managed to fix the connection without us having to cut open the GPS well. It’s amazing how this new technology can be used to solve all kinds of problems! Check out below for Mike “the surgeon” in action:

Mike performing "boat surgery"

A very problematic GPS connection

Also check out the Thunderbird 2012 together with proud team members:

Greg and Neil with Thunderbird 2012

Greg and Don Martin with Thunderbird 2012

See more pictures from this week in UBC SailBot in our Flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69199862@N03/sets/72157629148039060/with/6953451125/

Off for painting

Thunderbird 2012 ready for painting.

Great news, the boat is now at Strait Marine Boatyard for painting. Primer goes on late today and then we will see what is required to finish up after that – worse case more filler and fairing  followed by another primer then topcoat. Best case – only topcoat required after the first coat of primer. We are using epoxy primer followed by acrylic urethane topcoat.

The rudder is about 50% finished and we are now working on the masts and booms (about 40% finished). Karry has been getting the carbon rods ready for bonding to make the keel foil.

The new keel foil was one of the major design aspects in the boat construction for Thunderbird 2012. We did a lot of work making mathematical models of the new keel foil so that we could ensure that it would not deflect more than desired. As we already have the keel from Thunderbird 2011, we found out that we could use the old keel to find the deflection of the new keel. This is possible due to the exact same geometry and size of  new keel versus the old keel. The difference is in the materials used, which are all carbon in the new keel versus steel core and carbon foil in the old keel. Using this information to make a ratio between the materials properties of the two keels, we figured out that the new all-carbon keel will deflect well within the desired range.

Karry sanding carbon rods for the new keel

Carbon rods for the new keel

The heavy lifting will start on the keel foil this week unless the hull is still in need of attention.

We still look like we will be 2 weeks late on our March 15^th launch date. We may be able to pick up some time over the next few weeks but even if we make the end of March we should be in good shape for our overall on water testing program.

More pictures from this past week at Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69199862@N03/sets/72157629472592865/with/6791452860/