{"id":22097,"date":"2023-08-07T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=22097"},"modified":"2023-08-08T06:41:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T06:41:14","slug":"office-of-naval-research-niwc-pacific-host-26th-international-robosub-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/?p=22097","title":{"rendered":"Office of Naval Research, NIWC Pacific host 26th international RoboSub Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Student participants from across the globe built robotic submarines designed to overcome simplified versions of challenges relevant to the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) field.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Navy employs unmanned systems in every domain \u2014 in the air, on the sea, and under the sea,\u201d said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who attended Aug. 2. \u201cThe innovation and creativity we see through programs like RoboSub push the imagination of what is possible in unmanned platforms. These competitors represent the leaders of the future who will bring solutions to some of our most difficult challenges in the fleet and industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year 35 teams represented five countries: the U.S., Canada, Bangladesh, India, and Singapore. Teams are affiliated with high schools, university undergraduate and graduate programs, and non-profit organizations.<\/p>\n

Though teams compete for various amounts of prize money, cross-team cooperation is common at RoboSub, in what RoboNation Program Manager Julianna Smith called a spirit of \u201ccooperatition,\u201d a combination of cooperation and competition.<\/p>\n

In the spirit of cooperatition, Team Inspiration, a local team affiliated with non-profit organization Advancing Science, Technology, and Art, hosted a visiting team who arrived to the competition early for dinner at a teammate\u2019s home in the San Diego suburbs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rewarding to work with the other teams,\u201d one Team Inspiration member said. \u201cWe get to learn from them and then pass that knowledge down to younger teams, not just here at RoboSub but at all the robotics events we do. We help mentor kids interested in robotics both locally and globally and check in with them on Zoom and Discord often.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ohio State University team helped several teams with mechanical fixes throughout the competition. \u201cOf course we want to win, but not because one of the competitors had an issue we could have helped them fix,\u201d one student team leader said.<\/p>\n

Students from local team \u201cSDSU Mechatronics,\u201d affiliated with San Diego State University, drove back and forth from their facility to retrieve spare parts for other teams. \u201cWhen I first joined RoboSub, I worried that it would be overly competitive, but the atmosphere is completely different,\u201d an SDSU Mechatronics team member said. \u201cOne of the best parts of RoboNation events is that all the schools help each other out \u2014 and as a local team, we want to be a part of that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Teams submitted pre-event technical design documentation before arriving at the TRANSDEC. During the competition, volunteer judges evaluated the teams\u2019 performances in underwater autonomy challenge tasks, team presentations, and system assessments. Judges inspected vehicles for design, craftsmanship, technical innovation, and visual impact.<\/p>\n

“From my perspective as both the Chief of Naval Research [CNR] and the Naval Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math [STEM] Executive, RoboSub is truly a valuable and important event for fostering greater naval innovation,\u201d said CNR Rear Adm. Kurt Rothenhaus, who also visited the competition Aug. 2. \u201cNot only do we get to meet the next generation of talented scientists and engineers, but we also introduce them to some of the most pressing challenges faced by our Sailors and Marines. This is especially prevalent as autonomous systems and capabilities play an increasingly important role in current and future battlescapes.”<\/p>\n

In one of the six challenges, autonomous underwater vehicles navigated through one of two gates; in another, the vehicles dropped path markers into bins and earned bonus points for dropping markers in bins coinciding with the gate passed through earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeams have been in the pool at TRANSDEC nearly non-stop,\u201d said Travis Moscicki, NIWC Pacific lead for RoboSub, on the third day of the competition. \u201cHands down, the number one indicator of performance is time spent in water.\u00a0This highlights the exact reason we hold the event \u2014 there is no substitution for experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moscicki, who holds a doctorate in ocean engineering, participated in RoboNation robotics competitions as a student before his employment at NIWC Pacific. Now he\u2019s getting to watch how teams evolve year after year. \u201cOne team pointed out that at last year\u2019s event they encountered many gremlins (engineer speak for an issue!), but they weren\u2019t sure how to solve them,\u201d he said. \u201cThis year, they are still encountering gremlins, but are finding they have solutions.\u00a0Progression is what RoboSub is all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year, the National University of Singapore team took first place for the second year in a row, Brac University from Bangladesh took second place, and the University of Alberta from Canada took third place in the autonomy task challenges. Teams also won awards for design documentation, mentorship, ingenuity, data sharing, and \u201ccooperatition.\u201d<\/p>\n

NIWC Pacific hosted RoboSub from 2002 to 2019. This year marked the competition\u2019s return to the TRANSDEC pool, which contains six million gallons of water and is 300 feet by 200 feet in size. Its design eliminates all extraneous man-made or natural biologic noises and permits precise control of surface and underwater conditions.<\/p>\n

NIWC Pacific and ONR research, develop, and deliver integrated capabilities to the fleet. Both regularly contribute to STEM outreach programs which help develop talent and partnerships for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Navy is built on the keel of STEM education, leveraging scientific understanding, critical thinking and problem-solving skills to take us where we need to go,\u201d Franchetti said. \u201cOur Sailors and civilians are out there every day developing, operating and maintaining the most complex ecosystems of warfighting functions; integrating propulsion, power, weapons, combat and information systems we need remain the greatest Navy in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Student participants from across the globe built robotic submarines designed to overcome simplified versions of challenges relevant to the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) field. \u201cThe Navy employs unmanned systems in every domain \u2014 in the air, on the sea, and under the sea,\u201d said Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, who attended Aug. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22099,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22100,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22097\/revisions\/22100"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}