World Robotic Sailing Championship with Microtransat Trial

20th to 25th of May 2008 in Breitenbrunn at Lake Neusiedl, Austria

Organised by the Austrian Association for Innovative Computer Science in cooperation with the Yacht Club Breitenbrunn.

The vision of machines which relieve more and more tasks of humans induced many scientific initiatives in mobile robotics. Research in fully autonomous sailing boats was recently stimulated by the Microtransat idea of Mark Neal and Yves Briere. An increasing number of research teams around the world try to teach their boats the complex task of sailing. The best routeing decision, perfect handling of ever changing wind conditions, and perfect timing during tack and jibe are some of the skills a world champion in robotic sailing has to master.

World's best autonomous sailing boats will compete on the Austrian Lake Neusiedl from 20th to 25th of Mai 2008 in order to win the first world championship in robotic sailing. Morover the event is a very good trial for the Microtransat in autumn 2008. This will be the first transatlantic race for autonomous sailboats of up to 4m length.

Another highlight of the competition week will be the human vs. machine race. There we will see the direct confrontaition of a robotic and a human sailor. Furthermore the world championship will conincide with a scientific conference on robotic sailing.