UBC’s lost ‘Sailbot’ Ada found afloat off the Florida coast
Launched in 2016, the vessel was last tracked near the Azores, west of Portugal
Ada the robotic sailboat was lost, but now is found and heading back home to the University of B.C.
Ada is a 5.5-metre keel sailboat — or Sailbot — designed to cross the Atlantic Ocean without a human crew or help. It was launched Aug. 24, 2016 from Newfoundland and was supposed to sail the 3,200 kilometres across the Atlantic to Ireland. But it never got there.
On Nov. 14, the engineering team at UBC lost contact with Ada when it was close to the Azores, west of Portugal.
Then nothing — until last Friday, when the U.S. research ship Neil Armstrong from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found Ada off the coast of Florida, a long, long way from its last reported location. Ada was battered, missing its sail and rigging — but still afloat.
Kristoffer Vik Hansen was part of the UBC engineering team that designed and built Ada over a period of three years. He said it was a “pretty amazing feeling” to hear that Ada had been found.
Vik Hansen, who graduated from integrated engineering in 2015, said UBC is one of the world leaders in autonomous sailing vessels. UBC is a three-time winner of the International Robotic Sailing Regatta.
Setting a goal of crossing the Atlantic was a challenge for the students to take autonomous sailing to the next level.
“‘OK, let’s do something no one else has done,’” Vik Hansen recalled telling his colleagues.
“It doesn’t need to be a venturefunded, big organization to do it. It can be a couple of students that do it with things they scrape together. Much more about motivation than having a bank account behind us.”
Ada is a solar-powered, carbonfibre boat with a wood core and windsurfing rigging. Its electrical design includes two GPS systems and an ultrasonic wind sensor. One of its software innovations is an obstacle avoidance system that uses infrared imaging.
Vik Hansen said Ada is made of about 20 watertight compartments. All but one could be flooded and it would still float.
“We made it to be unsinkable,” he said, knowingly referencing the “unsinkable” Titanic that sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage.
Ada is being shipped back to Vancouver to see what happened so improvements can be made to Ada 2.0. The UBC team plans to be the first to enter a robotic sailboat in the Victoria to Maui International Yacht Race.
The next Vic-Maui race starts next July.
Discoveries made in designing Ada and her descendants could have applications elsewhere.
“I don’t know if autonomous recreational sailing will happen in future, but autonomous cargo ships with sailing capabilities to save fuel — that kind of stuff will be reality pretty soon,” Vik Hansen said.
“We have prior team members who work for autonomous auto manufacturers now. Maybe they learn something from this that they can apply to cars.”
Ada is named after Ada Lovelace, recognized as one of the world’s first computer scientists for the work she did on Charles Babbage’s mechanical computer. Born in London in 1815, she was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.
Vik Hansen said Ada Lovelace’s story should be known by more people. “Having a name like that brought a personality to the project,” he said.
“She has become a person to many people. Now we found her.”
I don’t know if autonomous recreational sailing will happen in future, but autonomous cargo ships with sailing capabilities to save fuel — that kind of stuff will be reality pretty soon.