Project Green Jet - a vision of the future of sailing

Bearing in mind that 2025 was more than two decades away, many new technologies would be expected to become available for the 'Invitation' by then. The brief BRP statement on the Invitation's feature set reads in part: 'Interface would be with artificial intelligence providing behaviours that would adapt to the users' personality and skill.'

BRP also envisions the operation of the 'Invitation' will be 'similar to riding a horse,' in that 'subtle (changes to) body language' will control the boat's direction, steering and attitude 'more than operations related to conventional boating.' Artificial intelligence will progress significantly over the next two decades so BRP envisions a sailboat which sails in the same way a fighter aircraft flies - the pilot's fly-by-wire controls tell the plane what to do, and the massive computing power takes over and does the rest.

By 2025, given that Moore's Law has become a self-fulfilling prophecy which no company is prepared to transgress, we can confidently expect this sailboat will have far more computing power available than anything currently in the sky, even if it has a NASA badge on it. Not only will it be powerful, it will be incredibly cheap because the microprocessor will by then be offering a cost-performance we can scarcely imagine right now.

Similarly, the sail adjustments to capture the wind which are today done with strength and balance on a small sailing boat or wind-surfer will be done electronically by then, with gyroscopic balance. Given the rate of progress of fuel-cell design and mass manufacture, and that most of the world's automobiles will be electrically- or fuel-cell powered by 2025, the power supply for the advanced electric motors which trim and adjust the sails will again be cheap, with high power-density and abundant power.

The 'Invitation' was also conceived to have 'behaviors that would adapt to the users' personality and skill', indicating that the skill levels will auto adjust, much the same way a computer game has skills levels, with the machine able to sense the capabilities of the rider in the same way that a good riding school horse compensates for the learner and stretches its legs for the intermediate rider.

Responsiveness and sensitivity to the balance of the rider are just a few of the characteristsics we can expect here. In all it looks like the future of sailing might actually be available to everyone, as the intelligent sailboard will adapt an interpret sailor behaviours to enable the learner to forgo the long and painful learning process.

It's sure to be a bugbear for all those who spent long hours learning their sailing craft, but it will make sailing available to everyone – perhaps not in its purest form, but pretty close and without several decades of tuition.

What else is known about the Invitation concept can be found here.

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