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Meet Bruce, the underwater robot

Thales has sponsored the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) Robotics team's entry in the 17th Annual international RoboSub competition. “Bruce”, a littoral-class autonomous underwater vehicle has been completely designed to complete the tasked required for this competition.

The competition began July 31st in San Diego, California. As a rookie team, Caltech has reached the semi-finals and its efforts have been rewarded by the best new entry award.

Caltech have been competing against 27 teams from around the world. The goal of the competition is to advance the development of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) by challenging young engineers.

 We are excited and ready for the competition this year and welcome Thales as a new corporate sponsor.
Justin Koch, Project Manager

The Caltech team, which is made up of 30 undergraduates from 10 different majors, worked together to create an underwater unmanned vehicle, affectionately named ‘Bruce”. Bruce is primarily composed of a pressurized hull to house the primary computer, microcontroller, pressure sensor, depth sensor, etc., 2 cylindrical camera boxes; a battery box; and housing for our inertial measurement unit.

Bruce had to pass a series of challenges to qualify to the next rounds of competition. The challenges Bruce and the Caltech team had to conquer include:

  • Identifying and ramming a correctly color buoy
  • Shooting a torpedo through the correct cutout
  • Locating a SONAR pinger
  • Turning a wheel and pulling a lever
  • Passing over a bar at a specified depth

 

Watch the Caltech Robotics Team introduction video for the 2014 AUVSI/ONR RoboSub Competition.