America's Cup - BAR develops sophisticated 3D sailing simulator

by Ben Ainslie Racing on 5 Mar 2015 Without cutting edge design and engineering, no one wins the America's Cup. In pursuit of their goal, the British team has developed their own sophisticated 3D sailing simulator, modelled on those used by the world of motorsport.

The virtual flying machine will support the vital link between sailors and designers, creating an important feedback mechanism between the two core parts of the performance team. It also provides an equally important feedback loop within the design team's optimisation process.

The man leading the team behind BAR's (virtual) flying machine is Dr. James Roche, formerly of McLaren Applied Technologies, where he had worked on the design of the skeleton sled that Lizzy Yarnold used to slide to gold at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

By the time of the 35th America's Cup in 2017, the simulator will be generations on from the first version, but the truth is; the simulator will never be finished. It's in constant use, and every time the team run a session something new is learned that can be used to improve it, the boat and the sailors. And the better it gets, the more use it gets – and the more it will become one of the most vital tools in BAR's America's Cup preparations.

The ground floor of Ben Ainslie Racing's temporary headquarters has been through several lives in the short time that the team has been there. It started as a boatshed, but the boat-building quickly outgrew the available space and was moved to another facility. Once the dust had been cleared, a sealed, air-conditioned room was built to house the computer servers that power the design team's thinking and research. Two areas were partitioned off for meeting rooms, as the growing team swallowed the desk space on the first floor. A gym was built, so the sailing team could fit training sessions into busy days, and in one corner...

In one corner there was a wide expanse of desk with several monitors and a big rack of computers, fans whirring, hard drive lights flickering. A single seat sat in front of these monitors. Clearly, anyone needing that much computer power was working on a very big project. Enquiries about the nature of the project were usually answered with a vague... 'Oh, that's James and the guys building the simulator...' Simulator? So this is definitely not your granddaddy's America's Cup.

Dr. James Roche
The man behind the Virtual Flying Machine

By Mark Chisnell

The ground floor of Ben Ainslie Racing's temporary headquarters has been through several lives in the short time that the team has been there. It started as a boatshed, but the boat-building quickly outgrew the available space and was moved to another facility. Once the dust had been cleared, a sealed, air-conditioned room was built to house the computer servers that power the design team's thinking and research. Two areas were partitioned off for meeting rooms, as the growing team swallowed the desk space on the first floor. A gym was built, so the sailing team could fit training sessions into busy days, and in one corner...

In one corner there was a wide expanse of desk with several monitors and a big rack of computers, fans whirring, hard drive lights flickering. A single seat sat in front of these monitors. Clearly, anyone needing that much computer power was working on a very big project. Enquiries about the nature of the project were usually answered with a vague... 'Oh, that's James and the guys building the simulator...' Simulator? So this is definitely not your granddaddy's America's Cup.

Beside the desk and the screens – and the rack of whirring hard drives – a pile of boxes began to stack. In time, the boxes were unpacked. A bland, low-slung grey container housed more circuit boards, with more flickering lights. Cables leaving the box ran to beefy, electrical actuators that became connected to even beefier rams. One day, carpenters arrived and laid a platform on top of the rams and, finally – like the crowning of the Christmas tree – the platform was fitted with a steering wheel. The simulator was finished. Or at least, it looked finished. The full story is more complicated, and starts with Dr. James Roche.

James Roche came to Ben Ainslie Racing from McLaren Applied Technologies, where he had worked on the design of the skeleton sled that Lizzy Yarnold used to slide to gold at the Sochi Winter Olympics. The link from there to an America's Cup team isn't obvious, but starts with Roche learning to sail. 'I got into sailing as a very young kid on summer holidays in North Wales, and my parents were always keen sailors,' he recalled one grey January afternoon.

After those brighter, warmer and sunnier summer days spent sailing in plastic Toppers and wooden Mirror dinghies in Nefyn, Roche graduated to steering a 420, a two-man youth dinghy. He made it into the Royal Yachting Association's National Youth Squad. He competed in the European Championships. He also sailed at school; team racing at Sevenoaks – something that Roche shares with BAR Sailing Team member, Paul Campbell-James.

Roche carried on team racing at University and then, 'I got really into match racing, and we won the RYA Youth National Match Racing Championships twice, so we got to go and sail in Australia and New Zealand at other events down there.' Roche trimmed the mainsheet for his friend, Nick Cherry. 'We sailed together for a few years, and I also did a lot of yacht racing through the RYA Keelboat Programme, on the Farr 45 they had that was donated by the John Merricks Sailing Trust. There were other bits and pieces in the Solent over the last ten years, most recently in a J97. And I also had a foiling Moth for three years till about 2010, and got a third at the Nationals before it got too competitive,' he added with a smile.

James Roche’s interest in sailing as a sport and a hobby grew into an interest in sailing as a career. He signed up for the Ship Science degree at Southampton University. 'I knew I wanted to do some kind of engineering and I wanted to do it with sailing — essentially I wanted to work in the America’s Cup — that was what I saw as the dream, but I think everyone does when they start that course!'

The America’s Cup might have been the dream, but the first high-profile sports event that came knocking on Roche’s door was the Olympics. After he graduated, the University asked if he would be interested in doing an EngD – an engineering doctorate – in a partnership with UK Sport (the British Government agency responsible for preparing athletes for Olympic competition). They wanted to research skeleton design for the 2010 Winter Olympics after the silver medal success of Shelley Rudman in 2006. 'They were looking for engineers that had some knowledge of competitive sport so that they could balance the academic with the demands of the competition. I was interested in aerodynamics and that was what the EngD was initially focused on, so it worked quite well.'

Roche spent four years working on the project at Southampton with Rachel Blackburn, who was responsible for the structural design. They came up with the sled that Amy Williams used in 2010 to win gold. The skeleton sled is a pretty basic looking piece of equipment, compared to say an F1 car, or an America’s Cup boat. 'The rules of the sport try to restrain you to just making a steel rectangle,' Roche explained, 'but there are opportunities, and the thing about our sled was that you could modify every aspect of it. So you could tune the sled to the athlete; it was the first time that had been done in the sport... it was much more flexible, both for different athletes and different tracks.'

This was where Roche did his first work writing simulation computer code. 'We wanted to create a proper numerical model of what was going on down the run, so we could test the impact of various different sled set-ups or aerodynamics. We took sleds down the runs and measured data, and then wrote a lot of long, differential equations. The data then feeds back into validation of the physics model that underlies the simulation, and it’s exactly what we are doing here for the AC62.'

After Amy Williams won her gold medal in 2010, Roche wrote up his thesis and so became Dr Roche. Unsurprisingly, given the success, UK Sport wanted to continue with the project and they set up a new partnership with McLaren Applied Technologies (MAT), who work across many different Olympic disciplines. 'They offered us both jobs to come and continue doing skeleton work... I was there for three years until last summer [2014]. So I did another Olympic cycle... and ran two projects while I was there, skeleton and then I took on bobsleigh as well — this was designing and building from scratch.'

One of the other sports projects that MAT were asked to work on during this period was the shared design programme that was developed for the organisers of the 34th America’s Cup, a project that was then run by Andy Claughton, who is now BAR’s Technical Director. 'I already knew him from Southampton University,' commented Roche, 'so he was aware of what I could do and once the UK Sport work wound down after the Olympics, I decided that I needed a change and got in contact with Andy and it went on from there.'

The project that Andy Claughton wanted Roche for was the construction of the team’s simulator. Claughton knew he was the perfect man for the job. 'I’m quite flexible and I can turn my hand to the coding, to the design and CAD side,' commented Roche, 'as well as the physical putting of things together and working with the athletes. So running this project is a really good place for me to be.'

The simulator would link the Sailing Team – who would use it as part of their training – and the Design Team; creating an important feedback mechanism between the two core parts of the performance team well in advance of the launch of the Cup boat. It also provides an equally important feedback mechanism within the Design Team’s own processes.

'We are trying to run the simulator as part of the same project as performance prediction. The models that we use to calculate theoretical data on how a particular design of boat will perform are exactly the same models that the simulator uses, so there is a positive feedback loop between the two as we refine them.'

The truth is; the simulator will never be finished. It’s in constant use, and every time the team run a simulator session something new is learned that can be used to improve it. And the better it gets the more use it gets – a very virtuous circle.

While he’s the most visible member of the simulator team – always tinkering with his baby – Roche has had extensive help with the programming from Jason Ker and Johannes Mausolf. 'Johannes, Jason and myself are writing the physics model and on top of that I’m building the actual infrastructure of the simulator, coupled with a lot of work on how the overall architecture works. We also have an external graphics programmer with a computer games background.' The 3D visuals viewed through the Occulus Rift headset were a big hit with visitors to the 2015 London Boat Show.

Roche described the experience that the sailors get when you add in the interactive motion platform. 'You don’t get all of the motions but you get the important cues that the athletes need to drive the boat. It feels like a boat and once you’ve got the visual experience as well it’s convincing. When you get to the end of the runway it’s a bit of a shock to take the goggles off.'

No one outside of the team and its immediate partners is likely to enjoy that experience for a while, as the simulator is one of the team’s most prized assets. A simplified version will find a home in the BAR Visitor Centre, supported by the 1851 Trust, at the new headquarters in Portsmouth.