AutonomousUnderwaterVehicleCompetition
Latest
Video: Cornell's autonomous robot sub wins competition, our hearts
Cornell sure seems to be doing its part to usher in a world where robots call the shots and humans spend most of their time cowering in the corners of bomb-out buildings. Researchers at the school have variously applied their brain matter (and we're guessing the occasional government check) to such sticky problems as robot consciousness, distance walking, and complications related to using robotics in zero gravity. And now we've heard that the school has just won something called the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition. The vehicles entered in the 12th annual AUVC (which was held at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego) ran an underwater obstacle course that involved bombing things, firing torpedoes, and eventually recovering a suitcase with "secret documents" (or old issues of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, depending on who you believe). You can see the thing in action for yourself in the video after the break.[Via GoRobotics.net]
SubjuGator repeats at 9th annual AUV competition
Those peeps from the University of Florida's still awesomely-named SubjuGator team have dominated the annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition once again this year, repeating their hard-fought victory from last year's event. Like last year, the competition entailed finding a docking station, inspecting a pipeline, and surfacing in a recovery zone, all autonomously, of course. The SubjuGator bot itself, however, went under some major changes for this year's event, with about 70% new parts, although it's still based on a single-board Pentium M system running Windows XP. We'd suggest the other teams start working to increase their game now, cause the odds seem to be shaping up well for a three-peat.[Thanks Sean C]
