On Wednesday, February 7, from 11 a.m. to noon, the DigiShape AI working group is hosting an online technical session with Fanny Rebiffé from MARIN.
AI Sail aiming to train a Reinforcement Learning agent to sail an Optimist upwind
In 2023, MARIN’s AI Sail team took up a challenge: can a computer learn to sail an Optimist with the help of AI? Friday 24 November 2023, was the moment of truth, during a demonstration with an Optimist in MARIN's Offshore Basin.
Most maritime prediction methods are based on a model-based approach: physics-based models are combined in a computational model and validated in model tests and reality. With AI Sail we want to demonstrate the possibilities of data-driven methods, where the physics are not explicit in the model, but implicit in the data.
When applied in the real world, AI often suffers from a degradation of its performance learned in a simulation. With AI sail project, we were able to address this issue. Thanks to MARIN complete range of facilities, we were able to create the condition for an AI to train in a simulation before entrust it with the Optimist control. The AI Sail team consists of a broad mix of MARIN specialists: machine learning, time domain simulations and model testing.
The AI designed for this project is a reinforcement learning (RL) agent, which learns to optimize its policy thanks to interactions with a dynamic environment. The virtual environment is a time domain simulation of the Optimist and our Offshore Basin powered by our XMF framework. The training took place in our computational cluster. In the meantime our model test engineers had modified our Optimist with remote-controlled rudder, sheet and ballast. In November, while discovering the basin for the first time, the AI managed to transfer the strategy learned in the simulation to sail the real Optimist upwind without further training.
Applied data scientist Fanny will give a presentation about this open innovation project. After that, we will have an open discussion with each other.
More information about this project
- AI-Sail - MARIN Report No 136, June 2023
- Can a Computer Learn to Sail using AI? - Ocean Science & Technology
- Can a computer learn to sail an Optimist with AI? | MARIN
Practical information and registration
- What: Online technical session
- When: Wednesday, February 7, from 11 to 12 a.m.
- Location: Microsoft Teams
- Register here
