CU Sail finished our team's inaugural trip to the International Robotic Sailing Competition last week.  The members who were able to attend had an awesome time learning and meeting all the great teams from around the world. Special thanks to the United States Naval Academy for putting together a great week. CU Sail spent the competition focused on autonomous sailing even when radio control navigation was permitted in an event. We decided that concentrating on better exploring the robustness of the autonomous algorithm was worth sacrificing the chance to score more points. We are very pleased with our deeper understanding of the sailboat and are excited about the many improvements we will be making to Sail-vane in the coming years.

For official results: https://www.sailbot.org/index.php/results/ 

For our team's updates and photos from the event: http://sites.coecis.cornell.edu/cusail/recent-findings/

Again we would like to thank all of our friends, family, advisors, and donors for making CU Sail's entire year so successful and fun. We could not have thrived and made so much progress without you all.

Thanks!

CU Sail 

Dear Generous CU Sail Supporters,

We are excited to be writing from Annapolis, Maryland, home of the 11th IRSC Sailbot. Our team has worked tirelessly since August 2016 with the goal of attending and succeeding in this international competition. Thanks to unwavering support from all CU Sail members, our friends, family, and Cornell we have arrived at Sailbot with Sailvane 2 (SV2). SV2 is the culmination of semesters of learning, iterative design, and testing on Cayuga lake. Earlier this semester, we sailed to and from GPS locations using only onboard sensors and computing--a first for any of our boats. This accomplishment marks the beginning of a bright future for our team not only at this competition but also in the years to come. 

Today, 6/12, we competed in the IRSC's first event, the fleet race against 10 other teams. While our team was unable to complete the course due to unfavorable conditions, we successfully demonstrated SV2's unique sailing capabilities. CU Sail is confident we have a robust mechanical and electrical system that can produce successes in the coming events. For a complete schedule, see the sailbot main page. We will try and post daily updates and images on our website, sites.coecis.cornell.edu/cusail/. 

We want to again thank each donor for taking the time to support our team as we grow, learn, and continue to sail forward.  

Best,

CU Sail 

Repping our CU Sail swag out in sunny Annapolis as we watch the fleet race and strategize with helmsman Alec.

First and foremost CU Sail would again like to thank all the generous donors for their contributions to our team. We worked hard through the remainder of last semester and have hit the ground running this semester. All of our efforts culminate at the International Robotic Sailing Competition in June. Check out Sailbot's website here for details on the location, dates, and competition events. 

A couple of exciting engineering details:

• We finished the redesign of the Printed Circuit Board (PCB). The PCB is responsible for interfacing all of our sensors and computing. It's currently in route!
• We are manufacturing our new hull this Saturday! it will be, for the first time, made of carbon fiber.

Stay tuned for more updates and photos. We look forward to representing Cornell and all of our donors on the world stage. 

P.S. Here's a shot of us testing last December; no such thing as bad sailing weather.

- Thank you to everyone who has donated to our project! We have reached 89% of our goal! We are getting so close. It would be awesome if you would share this project with friends and family to help us reach our 100%

- The new rotary encoder printed circuit board arrived! We integrated the AS5047 magnetic rotary sensor by AMS with our new windvane and are getting very accurate angle readings for the wind direction

- Basic solar charger circuit ready and functioning in the lab! The next step is to adapt it to power the boat.

- The mechanical team has been working hard manufacturing the new keel, ballast, sail, and deck. Lots of sanding, lots of composites, lots of fun!

• With the help from all of our generous donors we reached an amazing 63% of our goal in just 6 days! Thank you to all.
• You can magnify the impact of your gift! Please share our project with your friends and family and help us reach our goal in record time.
• Last weekend we participated in the North Eastern Robotics Colloquium hosted by Cornell. It was an awesome experience to present on our own work and also learn about other cool research in the robotics field. 
• A prototype of an obstacle detection system has been successfully implemented! Next step: obstacle avoidance.
• Our new windvane is ready for testing! The new design has a waterproof housing to protect the encoder and will be placed at the top of the sail to avoid being affected by waves that crash over the sides of the boat. We will not be able to place the windvane on the boat until the new sail is complete.
• This week we are planning to debug the autonomous algorithm by conducting a series of on-land quad tests. With success we will attempt to cross Cayuga Lake next weekend.