Artificial Intelligence - 
For 1 Boat Or An Entire Fleet!

Artificial intelligence is needed in a sailboat racing simulator to give you worthy opponents and to provide good protest committee decisions. As you can infer from Starts are a challenge your computer controlled opponents have many decisions to make: To avoid collision and fouling on a crowded race course. To get and keep clear air. To take advantage of both oscillating and persistent wind shifts. To use variations in tidal currents.

Each competitor in the fleet has to make his own decisions based on his own, unique situation.

As you select higher levels of difficulty, your opponents get smarter.

At the lowest levels, your opponents do try to avoid collisions and have a vague idea about tacking on headers, but they don't know about bad air, persistent shifts, currents, risks of a layline, when to jibe, or how to get an on-time start. This could be called, artificial stupidity at the helm. On the other hand, at high levels the individual competitors get very good indeed. Many factors are included in their decisions. However, all the information they use is also available to you.

Why is Posey Yacht Design the leader in artificial intelligence in sailboat racing simulators? In part, because of experience. Our first racing simulator was created in 1983. Every year since then, we got better while creating new simulators or major upgrades. Over the years, our customers have made many valuable suggestions.

Another factor is prior experience in the Aerospace industry. We know concepts used in military combat simulations and have experience in simulation of human decision making in applying the techniques of Industrial Dynamics as developed at MIT.