While it would seem that the actuator device is legal if it is attached directly to its own power supply, the wider question remain is whether a boat should be raced with a computer, rather than a human, driving a primary control function.
Boats
were raced with the help of mechanical or electronic "computers" - complex servo-mechanisms that sense and process "information" gathered from their environment, since we had started to use mechanical (windvanes) and electronic autopilots... The issue is the extent to which we wish this trend to continue. I am not sure that one can draw a well-defined line, separating the most-"mechanical" from the almost-"robotic" sailboats... Frankly, I would be glad to see the development of fast sailboats, even if they use as much computing power as they need - but I believe that the average sailor/athlete
would not be so happy with this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot
Stability augmentation systems
A stability augmentation system (SAS) is another type of automatic flight control system; however, instead of maintaining the aircraft on a predetermined attitude or flight path, the SAS will actuate the aircraft flight controls to dampen out aircraft buffeting regardless of the attitude or flight path. SAS systems can automatically stabilize the aircraft in one or more axes. The most common type of SAS is the yaw damper which is used to eliminate the Dutch roll tendency of swept-wing aircraft. Some yaw dampers are integral to the autopilot system while others are stand-alone systems.
Yaw dampers usually consist of a yaw rate sensor (either a gyroscope or angular accelerometer), a computer/amplifier and a servo actuator. The yaw damper uses yaw rate sensor to sense when the aircraft begins a Dutch Roll. A computer processes the signals from the yaw rate sensor to determine the amount of rudder movement that is required to dampen out the Dutch roll. The computer then commands the servo actuator to move the rudder that amount. The Dutch roll is dampened out and the aircraft becomes stable about the yaw axis. Because Dutch roll is an instability that is inherent to all swept-wing aircraft, most swept-wing aircraft have some sort of yaw damper system installed.
There are two types of yaw dampers: series yaw dampers and parallel yaw dampers. The servo actuator of a series yaw damper will actuate the rudder independently of the rudder pedals while the servo actuator of a parallel yaw damper is clutched to the rudder control quadrant and will result in pedal movement when the system commands the rudder to move.
Some aircraft have stability augmentation systems that will stabilize the aircraft in more than a single axis. B-52s, for example, require both pitch and yaw SAS in order to provide a stable bombing platform. Many helicopters have pitch, roll and yaw SAS systems. Pitch and roll SAS systems operate much the same way as the yaw damper described above; however, instead of dampening out Dutch roll, they will dampen pitch and roll oscillations or buffeting to improve the overall stability of the aircraft.
