Page 35: of Marine Technology Magazine (March 2006)

36 MTR March 2006 unmanned systems community. AUVSI, with members from government organizations, industry and academia, is committed to fostering, developing, and promoting unmanned systems and related technologies. Running these competitions is their way of getting new young minds involved in all the exciting aspects of remote tech- nology.

According to the AUV competition's technical director,

David Novick, of Sandia Laboratory, "we wish to chal- lenge the new generation of engineers and advance the state-of-the-art of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) by performing realistic missions. Last year the rules were made more challenging with the addition of having to dock the vehicle; follow a pipeline and drop markers; and surface directly above an acoustic pinger. Only the top three contenders were able to complete all three tasks. The rules will be much the same this year. Those who experi- enced last year will surely have a leg up."

Cornell University is at it again with more vim, vigor, red outfits and engineering secrets and breakthroughs.

There are at least 49 students enrolled in this year's two semester course. Cornell was the world champion in the 2003 event. In 2004 the team ranked second and in 2005 it ranked eighth overall, which put them a bit in the "underdog" category. The team did receive very high marks in static judging which (which is based on technical

University of Florida, Gainsville, Florida design team proudly displays the 2005 AUV Competition Champion vehicle,

Subjugator.

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