Vendeeglobe autopilots?

[Ian_Edwards]

Any ideas about the autopilots used in the Vendeeglobe?
The AP's are sailing the boats at high speed and often in very high sea states, the crew is managing the boat rather than sailing the boat, in the sense that most people would understand, so I guess they have to be several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than a standard B&G or Raymarine system.
They presumably use the same sort of data as my Raymarine EVO system, boat speed, wind speed and direction, and the input from an inertial navigation system.
And I'm guessing that they use some sort of neural net and AI to compute the output ot the steering system.
Has anyone got any insights?
Cheers
Ian

 

[Little Dorrit]

This might be worth watching

 

[Roberto]

I think they are mostly NKE, from mini650 to C40 to Imocas

 

[Ian_Edwards]

I watched Sea Wolves, that's what started me thinking about AP's, after a fairly wild down wind sail from Milford Haven to Penzance in 25 to 35 knots and a confused sea, with 2 principle components. A WSW very long ocean swell and a N wind driven wave patern. This resulted in some fairly spectacular breaking waves when to wave crests coincided.
My Raymarine Evo AP didn't cope very well, and I hand steered for the bulk of the trip.
That set me thinking about an AP upgrade, but I couldn't see anything on the market which would be very much better, until I saw the Sea Wolves video.
I'll look at NKE, thanks for the info'.
Cheers
Ian

 

[Roberto]

Here an overview of the sensors they use: inertial, 3 axis accelerometers, ultrasound speedometer, etc
Then high frequency sampling.
Pilote automatique 5/6 : Les pilotes automatiques des champions - ActuNautique.com

 

[TLouth7]

In one of Alex's videos he talked about how he has the only machine learning autopilot in the race.

I believe heel angle is a big input in these boats, keeping the boat under the sails and all that.

 

[r_h]

I think they are mostly NKE, from mini650 to C40 to Imocas

That certainly used to be the case, but my understanding is the foiling IMOCAs (and presumable Minis) need a pilot that goes well beyond the commercially offered NKE systems (good as those are).
For these boats to stay up on their foils the pilot needs to work in three dimensions. Check outmadintec.com/en/
I've not had feedback on this edition of the race, but certainly in the past at this level of racing there have been teams with the thick end of €500k available to spend on electronics. Although that kind of money can quite quickly be spent on development it still has potential to buy a big step forward in technology.

 

[Roberto]

The OP seemed to look for commercially available solutions.
As to more or less experimental pilot developments, there are a few
here Gabart is testing a Madintec proto to see if it could steer a small multi to keep him foiling, ups and downs

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1877476472295212

That certainly used to be the case, but my understanding is the foiling IMOCAs (and presumable Minis) need a pilot that goes well beyond the commercially offered NKE systems (good as those are).
For these boats to stay up on their foils the pilot needs to work in three dimensions. Check outmadintec.com/en/
I've not had feedback on this edition of the race, but certainly in the past at this level of racing there have been teams with the thick end of €500k available to spend on electronics. Although that kind of money can quite quickly be spent on development it still has potential to buy a big step forward in technology.

 

[geem]

I watched Sea Wolves, that's what started me thinking about AP's, after a fairly wild down wind sail from Milford Haven to Penzance in 25 to 35 knots and a confused sea, with 2 principle components. A WSW very long ocean swell and a N wind driven wave patern. This resulted in some fairly spectacular breaking waves when to wave crests coincided.
My Raymarine Evo AP didn't cope very well, and I hand steered for the bulk of the trip.
That set me thinking about an AP upgrade, but I couldn't see anything on the market which would be very much better, until I saw the Sea Wolves video.
I'll look at NKE, thanks for the info'.
Cheers
Ian

We use an older below decks Raymarine AP with gyro. It has worked perfectly in some rough weather over the last 27,000 nm. Are you sure it is set up correctly? What boat are you using it on?

 

[KompetentKrew]

My Raymarine Evo AP didn't cope very well, and I hand steered for the bulk of the trip.
That set me thinking about an AP upgrade, but I couldn't see anything on the market which would be very much better, until I saw the Sea Wolves video.

Oh, dear. And there was me thinking about upgrading to Evo; I have a Raymarine Smart Pilot at present. Are you updated to R4?