Now that the boat is almost finished, I can start planning the launch. It’s reasonable to wait until summer when there’s more sunlight and better weather conditions. The shortest path across the Atlantic is from Newfoundland to Ireland, but it also has some unique challenges. It looks like I’m forced to choose between hurricanes and…

In the past few months, I have been writing thousands of lines of code to bring the boat to life. The boat can be controlled from a web browser over wifi and the program can be uploaded remotely. It’s useful for testing when the boat is close to the shore. I attach pictures of a…

When I was simulating the boat movement in rough ocean waves, the compass output was too noisy and I wasn’t satisfied with the result. As the boat will be constantly climbing up a wave or surfing down a wave, the magnetometer is not reliable enough to estimate the correct heading. Fortunately, this kind of problem…

Over the past few years, there were several autonomous boats in which the autopilot stopped working just because some water entered the hull. It won’t happen with this boat. Because all the electronics is enclosed in a waterproof housing, it will remain fully functional even if the hull is flooded. The electronics is enclosed in…