Student sailing robot team rule the world

The Southampton Sailing Robot Team has won the 2016 World Robotic Sailing Championship (microsailboat class) in Viana do Castelo, Portugal.

The team of nine students from Engineering and Electronics and Computer Science, ranging from interns, undergraduate and PhD students to post docs, who entered the competition for the first time, developed a 1m long robot and programmed it to perform several autonomous tasks. Competing against seven other teams, they took second place in both the position keeping and the area scanning and first place in the obstacle avoidance, giving them an overall position of first place in the micro sailboat class.

Team Leader Sophia Schillai said: “It was a week that was equal parts challenging, exciting, excruciating and rewarding. We’ve made our mistakes, but we’ve definitely learned a ton. We’ll be coming back next year armed with way more knowledge than ever.

“We are very grateful to everyone who supported us, especially contributors to our crowd funding campaign, the University of Southampton Education Enhancement Fund and the organisers of the competition.”

A more detailed description of the team’s adventures can be found on the team blog, together with details of the software and the boat build - https://sailrobot.wordpress.com//

With many new ideas they are starting their preparations for the next competition and new members are welcome to join from the beginning of the new term. Meetings are every Thursday from 6pm, with more information available soon on the blog.