Envirover.com

Envirover.com is byproduct of "Raider of The Pacific" project with more practical purpose and a broader vision.

Sail Propulsion Laboratory

So far the boat is pretty difficult to control:

• With single sail,  changing the sail sheet angle moves center of effort too much.
• To work efficiently, the sail must be at a certain angle to the apparent wind direction, with about 3° precision. Our wind vane measures wind direction with 22.5° precision, which is definitely not enough. measurements will be further affected by rocking of the boat.
• The hull is too thin, the displacement is relatively high, so the waterline is close to the mid-height of the hull. Heeling of the boat dramatically changes the underwater shape of the hull along and the helm balance.

Using wing sail with aileron instead of traditional sail should solve the first two problems. Center of effort of the wing is exactly at the mast (25% of the chord length). Aileron will keep the wing at a constant angle of attack to the apparent wind direction.
To get around the third problem we will temporarily use a hull with more predictable characteristics, such as catamaran (high initial stability, low absolute stability).
To research properties of the wing sail we are building a prototyping platform called “Sail Propulsion Laboratory” (SPL) that will:

• Allow changing relative location and sizes of all the elements (hull, sail, aileron, rudder, keel, etc.)

• Allow measuring and recording of the different forces, moments, and angles.

Saildrone

Here is an interesting reading about the subject

The Drone That Will Sail Itself Around the World

The Bird View of The Boat

Here is a video of the first boat test from Eric's "bird". 

SeaCharger

Apparently, the pool of crazy ideas is not infinite. Right now a solar powered autonomous boat SeaCharger is approaching Hawaii islands after making a 2000 miles passage from California. Great job guys! Good luck!

Three Boats and One "Bird"

This Saturday we tried the boat on Big Bear lake. In the test we used two kayaks, one small boat, and a quad-copter.  The boat did not do very good - it was way out of balance (huge weather helm) and steering without any feedback and any indication of the rudder position was too hard to keep the boat on course. But overall it was fun, entertaining, and useful. There are no problems we could not fix. The next series of tests will be focused on balancing the boat.

Vlad launching the boat for the first time

Eric controlling his "bird"

Beating

The Project Turned One year

One year after

Today Raider of The Pacific project turned one year. The hardware prototype is almost finished (so far no solar panels). Now it's time for the software part.

The software is also half there (see Guidance, Navigation and Control Library for Arduino).

The Moment

For the first time all the pieces were put together and tried in water. The testing showed that the keel needs to be made longer. The current righting moment is not enough to upright the boat from horizontal position. Adding more weight to the keel is also not an option, because the boat is already too heavy.

MicroGNC

Here is the very first release of MicroGNC - Guidance, Navigation and Control Library for Arduino.

https://github.com/pavelbobov/MicroGNC

Autopilot components for model boats, cars, planes, rockets, and everything else that moves, can be steered, and has a mission. This library is intended to be light, easy to use, and extensible. It brings big industry standards and software development practices to small-scale projects.  

RC Pilot

Autopilot hardware is almost done. So far it is RC controlled. But almost all the sensors (GPS, IMU, magnetometer, and anemometer) are in place. It's time to test it on water.