Has anyone worked out if the Uno/Mega could be used to do something like this The World Robotic Sailing Championships 2012?
I don't intend to try you understand but well maybe ........
Mark
Most of it seems feasible apart from 'We will be using a smart phone camera to perform collision avoidance'. Not sure how they are implementing machine vision but I think the Gumstix is linux based so more suitable for vision.
There is a huge range of lengths and displacements among the boats.
The bigger the sail area the bigger the motors you will need to control them and the higher the power requirements. it would be good if the sails were PV and could provide power.
At least one boat is using ultrasonics for collision avoidance. I am not sure how well that would work in a windy wet environment but it sounds more practical for an arduino to process than some kind of vision system.
radman:
it would be good if the sails were PV and could provide power.
I remember seeing a report about a flexible film PV cell developed recently so that might become feasible in the near future.
I liked the idea of using wind turbines to provide power for a motor to drive a prop. Or maybe two motors for a skid steer boat
Rotary Sailing Homepage maybe using a vertical axis turbine in stead of the normal horizontal. So no sails or rudder so no servos.
Mark
So no sails or rudder so no servos.
That cannot be correct. If you want to steer the craft you are going to have to apply a force so you will need servos.
More interesting is the whole sailing into the wind question.
This is the first time I have seen this idea. Initially it looks like a perpetual motion machine. However energy is being extracted from the wind, so there is a continuous supply of energy. The question is can enough energy be extracted from the wind to move the device against the wind. If you allow the energy to be stored then the answer is a yes i.e. you store a lot of energy from the wind then move against the wind, so it is not a perpetual motion machine problem. That means sailing into the wind, without energy storage, is not automatically impossible.
Is my logic okay?
Can somebody explain why it does work though.
It is not necessary to store energy in order to sail upwind. Regular sail boats do it all the time. The fact that in this case the force comes via a much more convoluted path doesn't change the fundamental physics.
That cannot be correct. If you want to steer the craft you are going to have to apply a force so you will need servos.
With two motors and props that just what you can do run them at different speeds a she will turn!.
Mark
Sail boats can sail it too the wind but only by tacking. However with a turbine there is no need to tack which makes things a lot simpler.
Also the turbine ->dynamo ->motor setup can be used to charge batteries!!!
Mark
It is not necessary to store energy in order to sail upwind. Regular sail boats do it all the time.
doh, yes of course 
With two motors and props that just what you can do run them at different speeds a she will turn!
Yes, but something needs to run them at different speeds so you will need actuators or motors of some kind to steer.
We can see videos of models sailing directly upwind. Assuming the inventor is not lying or cheating in the video...
Can this be scaled bigger? Will it go faster than a traditional sailboat upwind?
These are the only 2 questions that matter.
sbright33:
Can this be scaled bigger?
Yes.
sbright33:
Will it go faster than a traditional sailboat upwind?
Depends how well it is designed and built. There are some quite high losses involved in that design so it won't be easy to achieve, but there's no reason it couldn't be made to sail upwind faster than an arbitrary sailboat if you put enough effort into it.
Cool! So why isn't anybody doing it? I believe a traditional sail is faster. They can be made to go nearly 1/2 the speed of the wind, even upwind taking into account the extra distance of tacking. A fan to push a boat thru the water can barely go 1/2 speed when it is going perpindicular, whereas a sailboat can go twice the speed of the wind.
Last month I sailed up the Colorado River rapids in Colorado!