Chapter V: R-evolution of sensors

Gyroscopes and accelerometers would become fundamental to many of the improvements in the precision and effectiveness of navigation instruments over the next two decades.

Was Graeme winn in Sailmath who first applied his potential to sailing after his participation in the Blue Arrow challenge for the Copa América in 1988 .

This experience formed the basis of a new system for 1995 Copa America he WTP.

The new feature of this system was the elimination of wind vectors created by the pitch and roll of the ship by using sensors to measure them; the resulting wind was much more stable and required less damping. A few years later another yaw rate gyro was added to the WTP and thus provided gyro-stabilized compass information functionality.

At the same time, there were continuous advances in sensor technology , particularly in measuring two of the four fundamental data points essential for any racing boat: the speed of the boat and the heading (the other two are the speed and angle of the wind ).

Measuring vessel heading and spatial motion has continued to evolve with advances in accelerometers, rotation sensors, inertial navigation systems and, of course, the GPS .

These new sensors have made it possible to eliminate many of the dynamic errors of the instrument systems, the peaks that are observed in the direction and speed of the wind during tacks and jibes.

This allowed the calculation of new data functions that were fully integrated into the system.

There are still fundamental problems to be solved, the correction of vertical gradient ( wind share ) or vertical deflection ( upwash ) remains largely complicated to measure, and a real-time navigation vision system at a price does not yet exist. accessible to anyone other than a very well-funded professional team.