World-leading sailor Alex Thomson partners with Noble Prize-winning technology lab - Forbes

Nokia Bell Labs are targeting further innovation after partnering with round-the-world sailor Alex Thomson to help his bid to become the first British winner of the Vendee Globe.

Thomson will enter his fifth Vendee race in 2020, having failed to finish in 2005 and 2009 before finishing third in 2013 and second in 2017.

For the first time the Hugo Boss skipper will be supported by an official technology partner, with the nine-time Nobel Prize-winning lab tasked to use cutting-edge technology in the 5G era to propel Thomson to victory. Mr Weldon said:

It became immediately obvious when speaking to Alex that his mission is comprised of some of the most challenging things one could do.

It is not him communicating with humans, because he is more or less isolated until things go wrong.

It is him communicating with a piece of equipment – his boat. That was fascinating to us in the 5G era when you think of tele-operations and remote operations.

What a fascinating and hard problem. It’s a networking problem, it’s a communications problems, and it’s a human challenge problem.

Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer of Bell LabsNokia Bell Labs

Across 19 years and eight editions, the famous race has been won only by Frenchman, and is regarded by many as the toughest sports event on the planet.

On average, less than a third of participants complete the entire race, while Thomson was forced to withdraw in 2005 with a hole in his deck and only completed the 2017 race with a damaged starboard foil.

Of the partnership, Thomson said:

Technology moves at such a speed, there are so many more advancements we can make now that we couldn’t ten years ago.

There’s so much more possibilities for AI, understanding your limitations and where you are at in the boat.

Because I am in such an extreme environment there are learnings for the technology as well, and I really think it can make a huge difference to my sailing.

Alex Thomson is currently competing in the transatlantic Route Du RhumAlex Thomson Racing

Thomson is currently competing in the 3,000-mile transatlantic Route Du Rhum from St Malo in France to Point-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe.

Nokia Bell Labs will be using the race to gather data on the Gosport-based sailor as they start building the technology to aid his quest.

The Gosport-based sailor is currently having a brand new £5million boat built to his exact specifications in Hampshire, with Nokia Bell labs set to contribute cutting-edge technology to the design.

During the 24,000-mile Vendee Globe, while crossing the Southern Ocean Thomson will be closer to the International Space Station than land as the race passes through some of the most hostile environments on the planet.

Weldon added:

We are looking to be surprised. We aren’t interested in the knowns, the knowns are boring, we like to be surprised and discover something we haven’t previously thought of and if there is one person who will do that it is the person sailing around the world single-handed and is closer to space than any other human

What we would also love to discover is the complete mapping of someone’s physiology and psychology that allows the average human to operate optimally from a sensor array embodied in their clothing, the system is sensing them and then advising them what to do. It is giving you advice every moment, on your physical state, your mental state.

To aid Mr Thomson’s quest, Mr Weldon and his team will design and build wearable technology to provide constant feedback and help the sailor make correct decisions in challenging conditions.

Mr Weldon said:

One of Alex’s problems he mentioned immediately is he is perpetually sleep-deprived – at best he sleeps 20 minutes every two hours. Anyone who has studied sleep knows this is a terrible way to maintain yourself, but that’s what you have to do.

He’s obviously isolated, lonely, you can become depleted in many ways both psychologically and physiologically, so he has no idea whether he is in a good state to make a decision.

So we are building him sensory things that will monitor him physiologically and maybe even psychologically to understand his sate so that can give him a readout of where he is in that human space.

If he makes a bad decision it is life-threatening. He will be getting continuous feedback about where he is and whether he should wait to make that decision.

He has degrees of freedom but it is difficult to know when you are in that bizarre state of almost torture-like environment.

Alex Thomson's racing boat Hugo BossAlex Thomson Racing

Across 19 years and eight editions of the famous race it has been won only by Frenchman, and is regarded by many as the toughest sports event on the planet.

Despite suffering a damaged starboard foil just 12 days into the last race, Thomson set a 24-hour speed record while finishing with the second fastest ever recorded time, behind two-time winner Armel Le’Cleach.

Yet with Thomson so close to breaking new ground, Weldon is confident the partnership can prove fruitful for both parties.

He added:

The best thing you can do for humanity is to improve the ways of communicating between humans and machines.

To do that you have to find the hardest problems to move the ball forward, so we are always looking at what we see as the most challenging problems.

By using new sensors, new technologies we are going to solve mission critical problems that were previously impossible and Alex is simply the epitome of that. ‘You have to go to the edge to innovate, and we are going there with Alex.

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