A New Class for Robotic Sailing: The Robotic Racing Micro Magic

Abstract

A number of boat designs have been proposed for robotic sailing, particularly inspired by competitions like the Microtransat challenge, SailBot, and the World Robotic Sailing Championship. So far, most of the boats are one-offs, often highlighting naval architecture aspects. We propose a new one-design class based on a readily available kit. Small, lightweight and with proven sailing performance the robotic racing Micro Magic presents a more standardized alternative, particularly for algorithm development and multi-boat scenarios. Our intention is to introduce an evolving class, and we propose a set of basic rules and describe the modified boat design, electronics, sensors and control approach for our prototype. Moreover, we have used four identical boats for the past year and we present results illustrating the good and comparable sailing performance, indicating that the class is suitable to study robotic sailing methods.