A team of students from Bannari Amman Institute of Technology in Sathyamangalam bagged second place in the Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge 2024 (SAUVC) event held recently.
The underwater robotics challenge in engineering lets participants experience the challenges of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) as the robot has to travel underwater without requiring continuous input from an operator. The concept helps students to develop skills in related fields of mechanical, electrical, and software engineering. The event was held at Singapore Polytechnic in which 103 teams from across the globe registered. The teams built an AUV and performed the tasks in a swimming pool. The winners were scrutinized based on the speed and accuracy at which the AUV performed the tasks. These tasks encompassed widely faced challenges underwater, namely AUV navigation, visual identification, acoustic localization, and robotic manipulation.
The team, ABYSS, comprising M. Thangadurai, A. Abineshwaran, E. Raveenthiran, K.H. Hamith Yahya, K.S. Yogadarsshan and K.S. Ghuruprasad designed and fabricated the vehicle and bagged the second prize. The team received a cash award of ₹1.23 lakh.