2019 International RoboSub Competition

John F. Muth

Project runs from 11/15/2018 to 08/31/2019
$5,000

The underwater robotics club competes in the AUVSI RoboSub competition, an international robotics competition sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the US Office of Naval Research. In RoboSub, teams compete to create Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) that can navigate an obstacle course and complete tasks underwater with no human input whatsoever. The tasks are designed to be similar to the real world, such as searching for and retrieving objects on the floor of the pool, manipulating levers and wheels, avoiding obstacles, and locating an acoustic “pinger” (sonar transmitter), much like the ones that are used to locate the “black box” on downed airplanes. Every year, students from roughly 40 teams around the world decide to take this challenge upon themselves, and learn real engineering, problem-solving, and teamwork skills along the way.