Prediction electronics

[BugzyCan]

This may be a stupid question, but are there electronics for a boat that will alert you to future dangers?


As an example, you are sailing at night, long voyage, and you are heading towards a shallow shoal or reef. Such a reef would show on GPS maps. Would it be possible for a future collision alert or future shallow depth alert to sound well ahead of you getting there? Perhaps it shows you a distance to the danger? or even suggests an alternate course.


Other possible items might be a floating obstacle detector, maybe something that can detect partially sunken logs in your path?


It seems to me in this day and age, these should be possible, but is it?

[Adelie]

Yeah, seems like a good idea in some ways.

There are several “buts”:
Most cruisers don’t follow a very straight course so you would have problems with lots of false warnings.
Such a warning system would need to put an warning icon at the problem point on a chart, lots of shoals and rocks disappear when charts are zoomed out so there should be some way to make the exact point at issue obvious.
Also there’s the whole unintended consequences problem. As automation does more for us people are less able to cope with emergencies when the automations fails. The airline industry is grappling with this issue currently. At least 1 crash (AirFrance 447) with 228 fatalities strongly related to this issue.

As far as flotsam detectors go, AI vision has a long way to go before it makes its way onto small vessels. In the mean-time Mark-1 eyeball.

[Pizzazz]

We getting there, slowly. There is little pressing need as you are supposed to keep watch anyway. Typical collision avoidance help aids, in addition to your eyesight:

- Radar is very useful, you can set an alarm zone in any way that pleases you

- Forward looking sonar - small range, not very useful, does not work well

- Cameras - there is a great opportunity here as cameras develop quickly, driven by the auto world. You can get a cheap back up camera, wire it to your TV and you get a good, wide angle view of what is ahead of the boat. You can even use the parking lines when docking into a slip under sail (depends where your TV is). Some auto cameras have built in AI that warns you of lane changes and other obstacles. You can customize the watch zone, the sensitivity, etc. This field will develop very quickly, I believe. If you go the camera route, my suggestion is to stick to analog or HDMI cameras (no lag) and get one of these gun sight IR torches for night time. The range depends on how focused the beam is but can reach 200-300 yards which is plenty.

- Plotting a course and setting the XTE very tightly. Most people reduce the XTE distance when sailing into a difficult navigational environment, I guess you can take it to the extreme.

- Not worry about all this and just enjoy sailing.

SV Pizzazz

p.s. On my boat I have radar and multiple cameras, forward and side looking, the TV is in the saloon, visible from the cockpit. It is not a substitute for being alert on deck but it gives you some comfort when you need to go down for a few minutes. One day I will try to dock the boat controlling the autopilot from below just looking at the TV.

[BugzyCan]

I like the multiple camera/TV idea, that seems pretty cool. Perhaps have a camera with built-in polarizer, so you can see through the glare on the water to what is underneath. Then all it needs is the ability to detect objects and sound an alert to pick up logs or debris in your path.
Does Radar let you set an alarm if another vessel is heading towards your future position?

[Adelie]

Camera with polarizing lens is nowhere near as good as an eye, the human eye has a really wide dynamic range (no sure if that’s the right term).

Military radar might automatically do that. If you pick a target on a commercial radar it might be able to track it going forward but I don’t think they can reliably pick targets on their own.

AIS. Course that’s not a be all and end all either.