AC Team Principal Ignites Autopilot Conspiracy Theory

AC Team Principal Ignites Autopilot Conspiracy Theory

you know you are 6 months out for the America’s Cup when a team principal ignites a conspiracy theory in this video I’m going to give you the technical context of that conspiracy theory take you through exactly what it is that Terry Hutson from American magic is suggesting and also give you my take on whether I think that this Theory actually has legs this may look like an ordinary dock out but all isn’t as it seems this is the first irrefutable evidence of Automation in ac37 so if you know anything about the America’s Cup you’ll know that they have retained the ac75 and if you know a little bit more about the America’s Cup you’ll know that there’s been some subtle tweaks to the boat to make it better performing in light airs however I think the big change for this America’s Cup is the incorporation of some level of automation between Control Systems this really goes to the heart of what it means to sail an America’s Cup yacht back last year I had a short chat with Ryan Thomas from MX2 New Zealand one of the people involved with implementing this uh automation or feedback systems but also one of the people involved with writing this new rule now when I put that video out I clarified this automation or feedback by saying what cannot be done is having the look at anything external to it the environmental conditions we’re not talking like environmental measurements the yacht can’t look at the wind speed or wind direction and then then tell the main sheet what to do but for my interpretation is opening up you know if there’s X load on y device then that could have like an internal feedback is that correct yeah yeah so the the feedback you’re allowed um from systems has has been opened up up now that is what we’re seeing in this clip from Emirates Team New Zealand stockout now the actual Recon photographer has been a bit fooled he’s panning from side to side of the boat looking at the foils come out and go back into the water obviously trying to get a glimpse from what at the time was a new foil for Emer te New Zealand but the really interesting thing is what’s happening in the middle of the boat the Mast you’ll notice that as the fools ra in and lowering between those two actions on either side of the boat the Mast is rotating this shows there some level of automation it makes a lot of sense cuz basically every time you go for a maneuver the process is always the same you’ll drop the F which was lifted initiate a turn and then the wind will fill in from the other side of the boat whether that’s a attack or a jive at that point you need to rotate your Mast before LIF lifting the old board and increasing your writing moment and accelerating away from the maneuver here we can see exactly that process on the Emirates T New Zealand boat and what is more we’ve got my friend Ryan Thomas sat in the cockpit looking at the systems is going on so it’s pretty clear irrefutable evidence of Emirates Team New Zealand having a feedback between the foil C system and and signals from the positions they’re in to the mass rotation control which is a rig control that’s pretty good cuz it’s one less thing for the crew on the boat to do but that’s all by the by it’s very interesting for a sailor like me but it’s not the conspiracy theory that has been ignited by um Terry Hutson of American magic so I just said before back in the previous V video I clarified that what the boats couldn’t do is take information externally information about their environment their position on the course the wind the current the speed of the boat to interpret what to do with the sails and the foils it was the sailors that had to be sailing the boat however Terry huton has gone and done a couple of interviews at the start of this year one with Shirley Robson one with sailing Illustrated where he’s hinted at a deeper quas autop pilot which could be implemented I’ll read to you exactly what he said cuz I don’t want to misinterpret it um I think he said pretty much the same thing in both the Shirley Robertson interview and The saing Illustrated video but um yeah this is the text from it Terry Hutson team principal for American magic says the big one is logic where there is a two second delay in the logic on the boats there is a quasi autopilot to use very simple terms that you can have inside the boat that has a 2C delay to actuate trim of a sheet and then 2 seconds later you can have different functions and you know that’s a big area inside the rule that I am certain that knowing the defender history with their cleverness in 2017 so probably talking about the follow the dot thing they had in Bermuda Emer Team New Zealand and the challenge of a record with the Formula 1 team to back them so talking about inos and Mercedes there these are areas that take a lot of time to develop it’s a lot of code writing a lot of logic inside the boat and it’s a lot of thought and understanding that needs to be put into it because you hear me banging on in the videos about systems inside the boat all the little things you want to happen in perfect sequence and so on etc etc so that is going definitely One Step Beyond what I suggested was capable does this amount to a conspiracy theory and I think what he’s saying is a conspiracy theory if you read between the lines he specifically singled out Emirates Team New Zealand and inos the two teams Challenger and Defender who wrote the rules this cup he’s then highlighted a specific part of the rule which he thinks only those teams have the resources and capabilities to exploit and like most conspiracy theories it stands in opposition to oam’s razor where usually the most probable explanation is the most likely now I don’t think that a autopilot is really possible and I think it it’s because of the 2C delay that it’s not so I’ll outline to you the systems involved basically you have two areas information can come from that’s the electronic control circuit which can have measurement devices within it and that can be all linked into the yacht’s um Control Systems actuators and back to the crew information coming from that and the other is the information logging system now this is logging information about the yacht state and its environment and that information logging system as I read the rule is really primarily for feeding information into the media system which shows up on things like the virtual eye and is actually the kind of source of the data was left online um and I analyzed in a previous video to keep them separate um from the control systems are given a 2cond delay and they only show up visually on the crew information system so the crew displays with a 2C delay when I think about sailing if I was taking the wind speed or the boat speed from two seconds in the past and then trying to make an autopilot control from that signal to you know control the boat that would be woefully late if in fact as a sailor I’m always looking well at wind to um preu what’s happening and yeah sure we’re only human we get these things wrong you may misjudge the strength of the gust or the depth of the law but you are looking much further ahead doing it with a TW second delay no matter how fast or clever your computer is I just don’t believe you could make a functioning autopilot from that yeah that’s exactly what Terry Hood is suggesting in these videos so does he know something more than me well yeah he almost certainly knows something more than me CU I’m a guy chatting on the internet and he is a team principal so when he says something like this you really have to take it seriously but equally you have to question his motives for saying it on the one hand he’s pointing fingers at um emeres Team New Zealand and there 2017 follow the dot system for flight control on the cats in Bermuda and he’s also pointing a finger inos and the big backing they’re getting from Mercedes and there’s a narrative there these teams are maybe using um technology or ideas which is beyond um what’s capable by other teams and he specifically singles them out so there’s definitely a little bit of needling there from Terry Hutson against these teams and setting up the context for a bit of a conspiracy theory the other side is that he’s hinting that he knows about some sort of quasa autopilot indicating them that you know American magic are onto some sort of autopilot system using this 2-day two second delay encouraging inos and emeres Team New Zealand to go down a rabbit hole of exploring this further and further he says it takes a lot of time um to develop and he’s almost encouraging them to spend that time perhaps Terry knows or believes that this is a dead end and he’s just kind of pushing his rival suggesting to his Rivals that this is something that they should be looking into with their resources and it’s something that American magic might know a little about I might have something up the sleeve on my honest interpretation of this is that it’s not possible I think the 2C delay is too much of a technical hurdle to overcome I’m just a sailor um and I need all the reaction time I can get and I know I couldn’t function with a negative reaction time of two seconds you know and this isn’t just a a computational setback of two seconds this is 2 seconds the information to come from the logging system through the media system to the crew displays but that’s just displayed so then the crew has to interpret and pass that information back into the control system having said all that there is one thing that I think is backing up what Terry is saying here like evidence for it and that is when I look at the controls on the lunar Rossa panel there seems these buttons which are labeled AWS plus and AWS minus there’s also buttons which are up and down and I think a logical way to use those buttons would be if you had some way of literally looking at the apparent wind speed AWS on a screen and pring up when the apparent winds speed goes up and pressing the minus button when apparent winds speed goes down and that would then change the differentials in your control systems and how they feedback to one another to get the kind of Quasi autopilot that you would want now that’s all delayed by 2 seconds I kind of feel like the Sailor would have a better feel for the apparent wind increasing than a two-c delay feed on their screen so I always assumed that would be something they were just pressing themselves on feel on how they felt boat was powered up so we’re 6 months out from the cup now and it’s starting to take shape we’ve got all the teams declared of launching the boats in the next two months we’ve got a conspiracy theory and rumors of autopilots and we’ve got our first site of true automation what I think will be one of the biggest real changes for these boats in ac37 I cannot wait to see the lawn of the America’s cut boats this year and if you’re like me then please subscribe and I will take you through every Nuance of these new boats take care see you around

A big development in the America’s Cup Class Rule has been the opening in restrictions around automation. But how far can teams really take this? We take a in depth dive to this fascinating topic follow a series of interviews given by @AmericanMagic team Principal Terry Hutchinson in which he suggest key rivals are working on a Quasi Autopilot for their AC75 race yachts.

Shirley Robertson Podcast here: https://shirleyrobertson.com/podcast/ (Series 4, eps14)
Sailing Illustrated: https://www.youtube.com/live/NjPmNuVJ13Y?si=LAIGshYCfysc0DuP&t=3252

Recon video and photos credit to Recon Photographer / @America’s Cup

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