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For immediate release
MIT Captures 1st AUV Competition Title
"ORCA" Robotic Underwater Vehicle Navigates a First Place Finish
Washington, D.C., September 8 -- A robotic vehicle designed and built by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) performed several elements of an autonomous mission and earned first place in the 1st Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.
The order of finish after MIT was Stevens Institute of Technology (Hoboken, N.J.), University of Florida, and Johns Hopkins University.
The Competition, held August 3rd at the U.S. Navy's Coastal Systems Station in Panama City, Florida, required that an underwater vehicle detect and traverse a series of submerged gates, navigate the course to a recovery zone, identify the greatest depth in the recovery zone, release a marker at that point, and surface upon completion. This entire mission was to be completed autonomously.
In its winning effort, ORCA, the MIT entrant, launched itself and navigated two of the six gates before going astray. MIT's success reflected the tremendous work of the team and revealed the complexity and difficulty of the Competition's mission.
The dates for the 2nd Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition will be announced by early November on the official AUV Competition website, http://www.auvsi.org/auvsicc/auvcomp.htm Pictures and additional information are available on the website.
AUVSI, in addition to its AUV Competition, held the 8th annual International Aerial Robotics Competition and the 6th annual International Ground Robotics Competition in 1998.
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, founded in 1972, is a trade organization of more than 2,000 corporate and individual members of the unmanned vehicle community. AUVSI members represent industry, government and academia from more than 20 countries and seek to further the technologies and application of air, land and maritime unmanned vehicles.
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Competitions
