|
ARLINGTON, VA July 19, 2001 -- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) emerged as the winner in the fourth annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle AUV Competition. Faced with determined challenges from Amador Valley High School, the Universities of Florida, Rhode Island, and Cornell, MIT overcame a difficult course and murky water conditions to prevail. The MIT team received $7000 for their winning effort. This is the third time the MIT team with their "ORCA" AUV has won the competition. They were previous winners at the 1998 & 1999 competitions held in Panama City, Florida. This year's competition took place at US Naval Academy located in Annapolis, Maryland from July 11 through the 15th.
The competition was especially close this year as each team struggled though a challenging mission of guiding their AUV through an underwater gate, finding an active object array (indicated by an acoustic beacon and map location), finding the shallowest depth in the active array, determining the ping rate of the beacon and recovering a marker at the beacon before the time ran out. Each team was allotted 30 minutes to accomplish the task.
Congratulations are also in order to the teams who placed as finalists. Amador Valley High School of Pleasanton, California took second place, University of Florida took third, with University of Rhode Island and Cornell taking fourth and fifth place respectively.
The competition was sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), and the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Supporting Organizations included the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, R.I., Northrop Grumman and the Marine Technology Society.
Contact: Jim Browne, Marketing Manager, AUVSI
703-845-9671 email: browne@AUVSI.org
|
Competitions
