Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge Europe

Executive Summary—In 2006, a pioneer team of stu-dents of the University of Girona (the VICOROB-UdG Team) decided to design and develop an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), called IctineuAUV, to face the first Student Autonomous Underwater Challenge- Europe (SAUC-E). After being the winning entry of SAUC-E’06, IctineuAUV was extensively used as a research platform in the Underwater Robotics Lab of the University of Girona. Four years later, in 2010, a renewed, multidisciplinary team of students took the challenge of building a new AUV aimed to compete again in SAUC-E and at the same time provide a totally different vehicle concept: SparusAUV. The prototype, designed with simplicity, low weight and modular design in mind, evolved from the initial Computer Aided Design (CAD) model to become a functional AUV in the short period of six months. In this same time period, a completely new software architecture was also developed to operate the vehicle. SparusAUV took the SAUC-E’10 challenge and achieved to be the winning entry. This year, a renewed VICOROB-UdG Team is facing the SAUC-E challenge again