Ben Ainslie Racing Hopes IoT Can Help Win Britain’s First America’s Cup

“What we are now doing is recognising is that we need to make rally fast, rapid, and many incremental improvements in performance,” he added.

The data is put to use at every stage of the boat’s development each season of the America’s Cup, from looking at data from previous races to ensure the design of the boat is fine-tuned, to harvesting information during testing in Bermuda or Land Rover BAR’s HQ on the Southampton Solent.

Before a race begins the team can use data, both historical and real-time to assess how they should tackle the upcoming race. And when the sailors are out on the water real time data collected by surrounding chaser boats and an onshore system can be used by the team’s engineers and strategists to inform the sailors on how best they can tackle the race as it unfolds.

“We’re looking at what the sailors are doing, what the systems are doing, the loads in the structures, the pressures; so, we’re looking at all that information and how to correlate that with sea state, tide, wind etc.” said Whitmarsh.

“We’re all about finding performance, finding a quicker boat that can accelerate, manoeuvre, change direction, and can reach higher speeds.

“But in order to do that we also have to choreograph six sailors that have got to, as they are making these manoeuvres, move from one side of the boat to the other. And all of that means man-to-machine interface is very important as well.”

Floating on data

Sticking with Formula One comparisons, teams in the America’s Cup need the support of major technology companies to put the systems in place for them to collect and filter through all this aquatic IoT data.

It is no surprise then that database giant Oracle has a team in the completion, and Land Rover BAR works closely with Dell EMC to have the infrastructure and server systems in place to ensure the team stays in contention for the coveted America’s Cup, a prize that has yet to be won by a British team despite being around since 1851.

Given Land Rover BAR heralds from Britain, a nation with a rich history of naval supremacy, Whitmarsh and his team, headed up by the most successful Olympic sailor in history Ben Ainslie, hope to rectify that.

How did Dell EMC help? Find out on page 3…