UF's robotic sub wins international contest for third straight year

July 16, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida engineering team on Sunday won an international robotic submarine competition for the third year in a row, beating 27 other teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Tech and Cornell and other universities.

SubjuGator 6, UF’s completely revamped 53-pound robotic submarine, was the only one able to complete the most challenging task in this year’s International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in San Diego, said Eric Schwartz, faculty adviser to the team and associate director of UF’s Machine Intelligence Laboratory.

That task involved finding, picking up and retrieving a treasure chest. It was the last challenge in the four-day, pirate-themed competition, Schwartz said.
“It was close until the end because there are several tasks to perform,” he said. “The task we got at the end, no one else could perform, and it was worth as many points as all the other tasks combined.”

Following last year’s victory, the UF team rebuilt SubjuGator for the first time, adding an expensive sensor donated by Harris Corp. that “allowed us to do things in a whole new way,” Schwartz said. Besides picking up the treasure chest, SubjuGator 6 docked with buoys, followed submerged pipelines and performed other tasks. As a result of the victory, the UF team took home $8,000 in prize money.

UF has participated in the robotic submarine competition, sponsored in part by the U.S. Navy, every year since it started in 1998. This year’s team is composed of more than a dozen undergraduate and graduate students in electrical and mechanical engineering. Kevin Claycomb, a doctoral student in electrical engineering, served as the project leader.