A cornish marine technology company has developed a guidance system for blind sailors which it believes is a world first.Fowey-based Triskel Marine Ltd's (TML) 'Sailguide' allows visually impaired sailors to navigate a boat with no external human help.
The system was trialed last week by blind and deaf sailor Tony Lawton with great success. TML's managing director Ken Wittamore said: "We have been working on the system for the best part of a year and the success with Tony is a major milestone.
"Helping Tony to sail independently, despite the difficulties he faces, has probably been the most challenging job we have ever taken on. "His perpetual optimism and enthusiasm have helped us enormously."
For the trial Tony navigated a specially equipped cruising boat so that his performance could be closely monitored. The next step will be to fit the system to Tony's Challenger dinghy.
The GPS-based technology is designed to allow sailors to steer around a series of special buoys using information provided by a computer-generated voice. Once activated the buoy transmits its position and identity to a receiver in the boat which then calculates how far away it is and in what direction. This is converted into a voice prompt which gives the distance and bearing to the mark. The skipper then makes navigational decisions based on information from the computer.
Tony Lawton received his voice guidance through a hearing loop. He said: "This is the first time since becoming blind that I have been able to sail a boat with no external assistance. "It was a wonderful emotional moment when I first steered the boat around the mark and all of the crew cheered and clapped. "I thought I would never be able to sail independently again, but using the Sailguide I hope to be racing independently again next season."
The hardware for Sailguide was designed by Omicron, which is based near Helston. Ken Wittamore said: "The Sailguide technology has a number of other marine applications which we are already developing. "As far as we are aware the system is a world first - other people have produced speaking compasses, but nobody has produced anything like this.
"The system's computerised voice was recorded by my daughter Jenny. "We were tempted to call it the JenJen, as a marine equivalent of the TomTom, but we decided that might be a bit obtuse!"
http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=147201&command=displayContent&sourceNode=147172&contentPK=18357792&folderPk=83293&pNodeId=147267Created on ... October 09, 2007