A lot of important things have happened in our lives since the last post: some of them (too personal to be shared on a public space) have been very hard to cope with and kept us away from the blog, but others have filled us with joy, as for example the Egyptian revolution, that we followed almost minute-by-minute (in a way, that too kept away from the blog!). Nevertheless, back we are!

My first post for 2011 is to promote a long-term project that I initiated with a friend of mine last September. It is about building an autonomous sailing robot (i.e.: a sailing boat operated by a computer making autonomous decisions and getting the energy from on-boat solar panels) that eventually – in a few years time – will be able to circumnavigate the planet.

Does it sound like too ambitious? Maybe. But the thing with this kind of projects – at least for me and Erl, my friend – is about learning, rather than achieving our goal. It’s a bit like striving for perfection: one never gets there, but the tension towards it keeps you developing and improving your own skills. Furthermore the challenge of building such a boat is truly multidisciplinary; just to give an idea, these are a few of the domains in which some degree of knowledge is required: electronics, programming, aerodynamics, meteorology, carpentry, fluid dynamics, sailing, composite materials.

Without further ado, here’s the link to the Magellan Machine’s website: our very own autonomous sailing robot!