The Microship User Interface

One of the primary design goals in this whole system is that ALL operations must be manageable easily from the cockpit. Not only are we constrained by basic singlehanding requirements, but moving around on the deck can be fairly challenging under lively conditions – clambering over slippery solar panels to perch delicately on the bow while furling the sail constitutes flirtation with a potentially fatal man-overboard situation.

This has profoundly complicated the design, of course, for we’re still dealing with a canoe hull here... there’s not a lot of space to play with. The challenge (which is familiar to air- and spacecraft designers) is to integrate a huge array of controls and displays into the tiny space accessible to a human constrained to a seat.

The Microship user-interface tools fall into two broad categories: mechanical and electronic. The latter, with only minor exceptions, is contained within the console and a small cluster of controls; the former, a diverse collection of lines, levers, and hydraulics, introduces a complex set of physical design issues.

The cockpit design was defined almost entirely by ergonomics – early on, we spent huge amounts of time in biometric analysis, measuring the operating envelopes of pedaling legs and reaching arms, while defining the balance between optimum eye-point and overall height off the bilge. As it turned out, we had less than an inch of slack: the seating position is affected by boom clearance and visibility issues, which in turn constrained everything from the vertical dimension of the console screen window to the placement of rudder control handles. To allow fine-tuning in response to seasonal clothing thickness variations and minor errors in our initial assumptions, the recumbent seat can be minutely adjusted using a vernier system to hundreds of positions and angles. As noted earlier, it is also retractable onto the afterdeck to allow sleeping within the cockpit.

In practice, everything ends up being defined by the pedaling axis; other than tweaking my slouch-angle, there wasn’t much we could do about my body dimensions. You can see how this became a rather circular problem – it took days of fiddling and measuring with kluged pedaling emulators to finalize the location of the pillow blocks and specify crank length, which, along with my foot dimensions, then defined the shape of the console’s underside. Hot-glued cardboard models began to take shape, and once the seat was in place we could at last nail windshield dimensions, cowling shape, dodger placement, and the T-handle steering levers that I’ll spend thousands of hours gripping at levels from the delicate to the desperate. All other controls then had to fit within those dimensions, or at least not get in the way.

I should note here that the basic canoe cross-section was modified considerably: we raised the gunwales a couple of inches, then added a deck that extends both inboard and outboard. On the inboard side, it provides a horizontal surface that is opened into a sort of coaming and supports the console; outboard, it curves upward into “gunwale bellies” that increase the perceived cockpit space, provide armrests, and support the edges of the solar panels. The resulting “decklets” also carry bearing cages for the pivoting T-handles that are coupled to rudder hydraulics, while providing a more comfortable surface than the normal sharp gunwales of a canoe hull.

Now the challenge is to fit everything else in...

The vertical bellies turned out to be the perfect place for the four levers that effect landing gear deployment and retraction via tensioned low-stretch lines routed through a total of 18 turning blocks to the struts. The stresses here are occasionally huge, so we threw quite a bit of glass at it – with built-up latch assemblies on the inside and outside of both port and starboard sets to firmly lock the levers in either position. The inner downhaul handles are above my arms when in normal relaxed steering posture; the outer ones are accessed by unlocking and hinging up the solar panels. (Incidentally, those outer levers handle the uphaul of fore and aft landing gear, and not only carry the deployment lines but also hydraulic cylinders that rotate the forward wheels 75 degrees so they’ll tuck nicely under the solar panels. This is handled on the aft wheels with bungees and offset line attachment, but the forward set had to be steerable, which complicated everything!)

Another lever in the cockpit takes care of pedal drive unit deployment; mounted on the starboard side under the deck, it locks in either position and handles the SpinFin through a rotating thru-hull linkage. A rotating latch assembly with adjustable friction (based on a recycled drum sander mandrel) allows the drive unit to kick up instead of fracture in a grounding.

Across the cockpit from this assembly is the daggerboard trunk, and just above it under the port decklet is a linear hydraulic assembly with a rotating handle. This takes care of rudder deployment and retraction, lockable in either position – and again, the ability to kick up in a grounding thanks to a latch with a compressed rubber spring. All four appendages had to be designed with this problem in mind, adding complexity to the apparently simple uphaul/downhaul problem.

The bulkhead behind my seat is given over almost entirely to hydraulic system management. A manifold of ten valves allows any of the fluid circuits to be recalibrated on the fly, with a reservoir Tee’d into the system to take up any slack. And speaking of stuff behind me, I do have to turn around to deploy and retract the electric thruster... there was just no good way to remote this. I also have to turn around to open the aft gear hatch, but we must be wlling to accept a certain level of inconvenience in a canoe!?

So far we’ve covered the major mechanical devices in the cockpit, but we still haven’t taken care of sail controls and other nautical essentials. This is actually a messy problem, because the tails of control lines can become extremely cluttered. The lines involved are:

• Mainsheet, which enters the cowling on the port side via a turning block on the forward aka and terminates in a swivel cleat near the daggerboard. A little bungee fixture lets me hang the tail on the daggerboard trunk?– this is the messiest one.
• Furling lines on the starboard side, terminating in jam cleats. This allows free rotation of the mast to set the sail area anywhere between zero and 100%. (At the lesser levels, sail shape is far from optimal; this is more a furler than a proper reefer.)
• Traveler controls on the arch overhead, a bit awkward to reach but at least they’re out of the way.
• Bow painter, which is stowed when not in use but must be readily accessible.
• Docklines with eyes, likewise.
• Anchor line and corresponding pendant from the starboard ama to allow off-center anchoring off the stern via a bridle. The bulk of the rode is 185 feet of nylon webbing, spooled onto an “Ankarolina.”
• Sail outhaul.
• Vang to flatten the sail under some conditions.

 
The lines and their associated cleats and stowage tools add a layer of complexity to the cockpit, but there’s still more... we also have to provide for a wide range of liveability components. There’s a 7-liter water tank along with a small faucet and pump.... a bilge pump against the bulkhead behind the seat... a magic hydraulic stopcock that locks the rudder... stowage for fabric dodger components not currently in use... and various nacelles for essential personal accessories, binoculars, hand-bearing compass, old-fashioned paper charts, sunglasses...

Finally, on top of all that, we have the electronics:  waterproof speakers, microphone, wearable computer, sealed keyboard, pointing device... all those user interface goodies that connect me with the console system itself. We’ve been alluding to this box all along; I think it’s time to take a look inside...