University of Maryland wins Unmanned Underwater Vehicle competition

The University of Maryland has won the 11th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, in San Diego California. The event is organized by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Office of Naval Research, and challenges universities to design and build an AUV capable of navigating realistic underwater missions.

Twenty-five teams from the US, India, Canada and Japan participated in the AUV competition, which involved dead reckoning approximately 50 feet through the starting gate, pipeline following, buoy docking, tracking and hovering over an acoustic pinger, grabbing an object and surfacing with the object to a floating ring.

Coming second in the competition was the University of Texas at Dallas, followed by École de technologie supérieure. A full list of the placings can be found here. The competition also gave out several special awards: the University of Colorado at Boulder won Best New Entry; the Delhi College of Engineering won Most Improved; the University of Wisconsin won the Tupperware Use Award; the University of Ottawa won Persistence in Adversity; and Norwich University won the Innovation Award.

On August 8, the AUVSI and ONR also held its first International Autonomous Surface Vehicle Student Competition, at San Diego’s 40 foot deep Transducer Evaluation Center Pool. The craft will have to face challenges including passing through a starting gate and steering a steady course, navigating between buoys, detecting and eliminating shore bound threats, docking and recovering a victim. Embry-Riddle University, Florida Atlantic University, École de technologie supérieure, the University of Central Florida, the University of Michigan, and Villanova University are competing.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International has over 1,400 member companies and organizations from 50 countries, making it the world’s largest non-profit organization devoted exclusively to advancing the unmanned systems community.