Page 12: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2011)

12MTRSeptember 2011By Edward Lundquist For the ten teams participating in the Student Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge?Europe (SAUC-E), held at the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) July 4-11, 2011, it wasn?t the difficult course, or even the highly qualified competition thatworried them. The biggest obstacle was the underwater environment, with its limited visibility, currents and salty water. The team from the University of Lübeck in Germany?with their AUV named Hanse ?received the top scores by successfully completing mission tasks, along with other fac-tors such as presentation and project documentation. The team from the DFKI Bremen (The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, or The Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI)) was the third place winner. The fourth place team was from ENSTA Bretagne in France (École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne, or "National Institute of Advanced Technology, Brittany" in English). Heriot-Watt University from Scotland and their "Nessie" AUV also qualified for the final round of the competition and received the ?Cooperation Award." This year?s ?mission? was conducted in NURC?s marina, a salt-water basin open to La Spezia harbor?the third busiest in Italy? on the Ligurian Sea. ?This proved to be extremely chal- lenging last year and was so again, many of the team?s performances were better than the previous year, nevertheless they all found the condi- tions extremely challenging and care- ful consideration needs to be given to the tasks in 2012 to ensure they news SAUC-EEuropean University Robotics Teams Gain Deeper Understanding of AutonomousUnderwater Vehicle Challenges The University of Lübeck took firstprize at the Student AutonomousUnderwater Vehicle Challenge?Europe (SAUC-E). MTR#7 (1-17):MTR Layouts 8/29/2011 10:29 AM Page 12