The next stage in sophistication is to hook the computer to the boat's loran, a system that calculates a boat's position from radio signals sent from shore.
A SCUBA diver held the reflectance probe against rock substrates while readings were acquired and saved on a laptop computer in a boat.
The device beams live images to computers on a boat and on shore, and records them, so that any change will be detected, Mr. Tripp said.
But the regatta director, Iain Murray, has simply been responding to the weather data and directives delivered to his computer on the committee boat.
Meijer's biggest challenge came down to effectively modeling the boat using computer simulations, and then integrating the different sensors into the electronic device.
An icon on McLeod's computer screen showed the boat's position over the bottom and enabled him to engage in a surgical strike for scallops.
The researchers then had a group of children play a computer game, simulating a boat trip from Troy to Ithaca, in which they had to choose a captain for the voyage; their options consisted of the same 2002 election candidates.
A North Sea diver cheated death after a catastrophic computer failure saw his boat drift away and his oxygen supply cut off.
The optical fiber head was mounted on a 1 m tall tripod, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10 m below the water surface, and readings were saved on a laptop computer placed on a boat.
Holding the irradiance probe, a SCUBA diver attained position at depths of 5, 10 and 15 m, and readings were saved on a computer placed on a boat (positioned as far as possible and never between the diver and the sun to prevent shading).
