Sea Green Team 2019
Sailboat Position Tracking
In sailboat racing, the starting line is judged by line-of-sight from the committee boat to a buoy. Especially in larger fleets, this method becomes inaccurate and unreliable. This causes regattas to go off schedule and run fewer full races than would ideally be possible. This project aims to enable race officials to run more efficient regattas, which would allow sailors to spend less time waiting and more time racing. We are making a positioning system to provide accurate, low-cost position data to sailing race officials judging the location of boats relative to the start line. We designed a system of trackers using RTK-GPS to provide centimeter-precise position data to a central base station on the race official’s boat. This requires a wireless system for transmitting data in real time, a system for aggregating data from multiple devices and forming a set of positions as solutions. Finally, the project includes a user application for visualization and control of the product on an iPad.
Related Tech Notes
- Kalman Filters by Aubrey Anderson
- How GPS Devices Work: Data They Receive and What They Do With It by Zachary Faber Manning
Sea Green Team Project Poster
