The third annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle competition was held from July 7-9, 2000 in Orlando Florida, at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort. I attended the competition this year as a spectator.

This is a trip report/slide show from the trip, with lots of pictures (thanks Jackie :-) taken while I was there.

The first two competitions were held in Panama City, Florida, at a Naval test facility. You can find more information about the previous competitions from AUVSI's web site, which is here.

That site also has the rules from this year's competition, as a PDF document. I have included a link to that document here, so you can get a better feeling of the details of the contest.

Basically, the contest this year was held in a small inlet of a lagoon. It was basically a small lake, about 400 by 500 feet in size, and averaging about 8 or 10 feet deep. In the middle of the lake, spaced out a couple hundred feet, were four beacons sitting on the bottom. Each beacon had a visible strobe light, an acoustic pinger, and a large ring sitting on top. The objective of the contest was for an AUV to determine which of the four beacons was turned on (strobing and pinging), and get the ring from that beacon, and surface with it attached to the AUV. All completely autonomously, of course. The judges turned on one of the beacons after the sub was in the water, and running autonomously.

Nobody actually accomplished that mission, although a few teams came close. The list of teams, with contact and web page information is found here.

So, following is each day's report, with pictures and commentaries.

• Day One - Static judging, testing
• Day Two - Static judging, more testing
• Day Three - The actual competition

And finally, the conclusion.

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