The first day of the competition was Friday, July 7, 2000. I arrived at about 8:00 am,
and after about half and hour wandering around trying to find someone at the resort who
knew anything about the competition, I gave up and just started walking back around the
lake, looking for anything that looked like an AUV.
I saw some tents set up on the other side of the lake, so I headed over that way, and
found what I was looking for. :-)
Most of the day was spent wandering around, talking to the teams that were there,
talking with a couple of the judges, and enjoying the Florida sunshine.
 This was the first tent I came across, the University of Colorado at
Denver. They had built a very large AUV that looked like a cross between a crab and a
space alien. In the picture at the left, you can see the frame, made of square aluminum
tubing, the computer pod (the big gray box slung under the frame), a few thrusters, and
the battery pack, sitting in the white tube at the top... Yeah, at the top. Oops... Like
most of the teams, they used electric trolling motors for thrusters.
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 This was the entry from the University
of Florida. The AUV was empty at this point, and the guy in the pool is holding it down
under water, checking for leaks. They had six thrusters on their sub, giving them a full
six degrees of freedom.
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 This was MIT's entry, Orca-2. This sub won the competition last year, and
their previous sub, Orca, won the first year's competition. They had a lot of money,
advanced sensors (including a $10,000 + inertial navigation system -- you can see the
orange cylinder in the picture, hanging below the upper tube of the sub). Everyone pretty
much expected them to win.
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 Here's Orca-2 again, sitting on the dock, getting ready to be lowered
into the water with the crane. You can see pretty clearly the silver horizontal thruster
on the side, and there's a matching one on the other side. At the front and rear were a
pair of vertical thrusters, that gave them pitch and depth control of the sub.
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 This is one of the Navy divers, in the lake with Orca-2. They did a great
job the whole weekend.
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 Here's Ryan and Scott from the University of Rhode Island, looking over
some code. Their sub was one of the more interesting designs, using a pair of Lego
Mindstorms RCX controllers for the computer control of their sub. Their sub also used a
pair of Lego gearmotors to control the dive planes in the front, and the rudder at the
rear. They used a 4" clear lexan tube as the main pressure hull of their AUV, and
used simple O-rings at each end to seal the end-caps.
A very simple design -- I like simplicity. I spent a lot
of time over the three days with these guys -- they were great to talk with. |
 This is the University of Western Florida's entry, a small yellow tank
that looked like a propane take or something - it was short and stubby. It had three
thrusters -- one on each side, providing forward thrust and steering, and one thruster
underneath, providing vertical motion.
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