Invitation Letter Of WRSC -- Teams
王立子
Dear friends and colleagues,
We are organizing the 12th World Robotic Sailing Championship & International Robotic Sailing Conference (WRSC / IRSC) in Ningbo, China, at the end of August. WRSC started from 2008 and it is now the largest international event in robotic sailing area.
This year we will have classic and new challenges for our autonomous sailboats in about one week, including fleet race, station keeping combined with obstacle avoidance, hybrid area scanning and a long-range challenge. As the spin-off competition from the micro-transatlantic challenge that the autonomous boat need to cross the Atlantic ocean without human intervention, this competition attracted many top researchers in the area and received broad global media coverage, e.g., BBC, AP.
We are expecting around 25 teams from all around the world to join our competition this year. The official website of all the WRSC / IRSC events are available at https://www.roboticsailing.org/ where all the announcements regarding the WRSC / IRSC - 2019 will be posted on https://www.roboticsailing.org/2019/
In order to make this competition more accessible, the organizing committee established the Robotic Sailing Academy in 2018 and the second campaign will be organized in early June this year, to introduce all the technical details of a sailing robot and its autonomous manipulation. Also, the organizing committee also makes standard sailing boats available with a basic price to cover the essential expenses. If you need a standard boat model, please do us a favor to let us know as soon as possible. It takes time to make a whole boat.
Along with the competition and academic conference, we would like to organize an exhibition advanced maritime robotics system with special focus on self-powered autonomous surface vehicles (ASV). We will also invite local businesses, national research institutions and other potential clients to this exhibition.
This year's competition, as well as the conference, will be host in Ningbo, China. It is the second largest city of Zhejiang province and also the third largest port in the world. With strong economic base and developed electronics industry, Ningbo is shifting its focus to high-tech industries while smart ocean technologies play an essential role in it.
We welcome everyone's participation and would try our best to provide everyone with a favorable condition to join this championship. However, we are aware of the logistic issue for this year's competition. Now we are team up with local government and potentially able to provide financial support to cover some of your travel cost. We would like to keep you most updated about the status of financial support from the local government.
Please fill in this survey form with basic information on your team, https://goo.gl/forms/Z4IIrT1HQw6Ijp2q1
Best wishes,
The Organizing Committee