From a distance they look almost like ordinary sailboats, their sails emblazoned with the red-and-white flag of Denmark.
But these 10-meter (30-foot) -long vessels carry no crew and are designed for surveillance.
Four uncrewed robotic sailboats, known as “Voyagers,” have been put into service by Denmark’s armed forces for a three-month operational trial.
Built by Alameda, California-based company Saildrone, the vessels will patrol Danish and NATO waters in the Baltic and North Seas, where maritime tensions and suspected sabotage have escalated sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
I wonder why they have those rigid “sails”, do they function like regular sails?
It’s much easier to automate than a regular sail. It self aligns with the wrong and with one or two actuators your set the direction you want to go too.
Automating flexible sail would be way, way harder.
They should do, assuming they’re the right shape. The main downside is when you don’t want them to catch the wind they’re a bit harder to put away, probably.
It’s not that hard actually, if you don’t want them to catch the wind you let them rotate freely and they will automatically face the wind in a way where they have almost no drag.
Much less chance of something breaking though.