Friday, February 02, 2007

RoboSailors in Dubai

Without any doubt, the vast majority of our readers have seen or heard of the 1980's movie RoboCop, where a private company that runs crime-ridden Detroit uses the remains of a murdered police officer to build a cybernetic soldier/cop codenamed RoboCop.

What does this have to do with sailing in general or the America's Cup in particular? It does if you are called Ed Baird or Peter Holberg and you helm an Alinghi boat. Of course, in its aim to defend the America's Cup, the Swiss team didn't carry out any cybernetic surgery on the two sailors. The fact is that the two helmsmen have been testing some RoboCop-looking wearable wireless displays the last few days while racing in Dubai.

More precisely, Alinghi seems to be testing the MicroOptical eyewear-mounted displays and in particular the SV-6 PC Viewer. These tiny displays allow the user to view a 640-pixel by 480-pixel feed from a PC or instrument. They can be mounted on regular sunglasses and via Bluetooth receive the signal of some computer or instrument(s) aboard the yacht.

If you are interested in these wearable wireless displays they are not cheap. They come at a cool retail price of 2,000 euros apiece.

What is even more interesting is that according to some information, at the other end of the globe, in New Zealand, BMW Oracle is testing a much more advanced technology, derived from Formula 1, courtesy of course of BMW. Probably, we should expect to see a RoboCop-like Chris Dickson in Valencia?

Peter Holberg at the helm of SUI-91 with his RoboCop-like wearable wireless displays. Dubai, 1 February 2007. Photo copyright Ivo Rovira / Alinghi

If you want to check what, more or less, Ed Baird and Peter Holmberg see when they sail aboard SUI-64 and SUI-91 just press the play button on the following short clip.

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1 Comments:

At 5:37 PM, Blogger 1958 Wooden Lightning Project said...

This is bullshit. Who's to say they aren't getting information regarding wind conditions on different parts of the course. This is not sailing.

 

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