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Students Compete to Design and Race Autonomous Surface Vehicles in the RoboBoat Competition

The AUVSI Foundation focuses on the future of robotics by developing hands-on educational programs that attract students and equip them for a career in this rapidly growing field. In AUVSI's RoboBoat Competition, student teams must design, build, and deploy a fully autonomous surface vehicles (ASV) and race the boat through an aquatic obstacle course.

Competitions such as RoboBoat play an important role in helping inspire and form new engineers. Students experience the challenges of and develop skills in system engineering by accomplishing realistic missions. These programs also enable faculty to teach students with tools that are in use by engineering companies in industry today. As a result, students gain hands-on experience that is highly valuable when they begin their professional careers.

The RoboBoat competition takes engineering theory out of the classroom and applies it to current, practical challenges involving autonomous vehicles in the maritime environment. The teams have many challenges, including ensuring that the boat can autonomously navigate through a channel of red and green buoys. Many of the teams use Model-Based Design with MATLAB and Simulink to develop and test their boat system.

Student Teams Use MATLAB and Simulink in the AUVSI RoboBoat Competition