Albemarle High School Wins Competition with AIRMAR WeatherStation® Onboard
MILFORD, NH.– AIRMAR Technology Corporation, experts in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of innovative ultrasonic transducers and sensor technology, is pleased to report first place results for Albemarle High School in the 2013 Sailbot International Robotic Sailing Regatta held in Gloucester, MA June 9 – 13. The group from Charlottesville, VA is one of 18 teams that gathered to participate in the seventh annual event, a competition that challenges high school and university teams to create an unmanned sailboat that navigates through a variety of tasks with limited, if any, human control. Contestants are judged on fleet racing, navigational accuracy, stationkeeping, presentation, and long-distance racing.
“We were pleased to support Albemarle High School with a donation of an Airmar PB200 WeatherStation and excited about the team’s first place ranking in the 1-Meter Competition,” stated Steve Boucher, CEO and Founder of AIRMAR Technology Corporation. “Sailbot is a terrific event that challenges students’ engineering knowledge in a multi-disciplinary task that requires mechanical, electrical, and software skills” added Boucher.
“Airmar’s WeatherStation played an integral role in our success at the competition,” quoted Eric Lee Hahn, member of the Albemarle High School Team. “We were incredibly impressed with the unit’s accurate data, reliability, and ease of use—all in one small, weatherproof package,” added Hahn.
The annual Sailbot competition is historically held in North America in which teams of university and college students from the United States and Canada compete. The first event, in 2006, was hosted by Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario and inspired by the success of a senior project at the University of British Columbia to build a robotic sailboat. This year’s event, hosted by Olin College of Engineering, was the first year that high school teams were invited to compete.
Autonomous watercraft technologies hold the potential to further advancements in national security and marine biology. Currently, the military and private sectors utilize a hybrid mix of manually operated and autonomous watercraft, but the production of fully unmanned oceanic vehicles, such as Sailbots, is now on the brink of reality. The ability to use self-guided robotic watercraft for coastal surveillance missions as well as water pollution sourcing, oil spill recovery and tsunami warning, eliminates the human risk typically associated with these tasks. Furthermore, the monitoring of marine animals will be greatly enhanced by this technology, allowing for passive observation of behaviors such as migration routes and pairing sites.
For more information about the competition and results of the 2013 Sailbot International Robotic Sailing Regatta, visit www.sailbot.org.
About AIRMAR
AIRMAR Technology Corporation is a world leader in the design and manufacture of ultrasonic sensor technology for marine and industrial applications. The Company's product line includes advanced ultrasonic transducers, flow sensors, WeatherStation® instruments, and electronic compasses used for a wide variety of applications including fishing, navigation, meteorology, survey, level measurement, process control, and proximity sensing. Established in 1982, AIRMAR’s headquarters are located in Milford, New Hampshire, with distribution offices in Lake City, South Carolina; and Saint Malo, France. Visit the Company's web site at www.airmar.com.
