Roboboat Competition Completes its 8th year
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
The annual RoboBoat Competition for autonomous surface vehicles (AVS) took place in Virginia Beach, Virginia several days ago and hosted 16 teams from the United States and around the world. This year’s Roboboat is the 8th time in a row it is being held. The competition, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), is a contest between autonomous robots built by students meant to pass a series of challenges. The groups of contestants were measured according to design and performance. The design was rated according to innovation, engineering quality and craftsmanship. Performance was rated according to the vehicle’s ability to get through the tasks on the water’s surface, including propulsion, navigation and speed as the ASVs passed through a set of gates, avoiding obstacles, launching from a moving boat, automated docking and more.
The groups had four days of course practice to troubleshoot system issues before entering into the qualifying sessions and final round to compete for cash prizes.
The big winner this year was Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, receiving $7,000, after which came Florida Atlantic University, which won $4,000, and in third place – Michigan University.
The competition is set to advance new technological directions in the AVS field for developing the field itself, but mostly so that new innovations and technologies will eventually to the U.S. navy, in charge of the ONR, who sponsored the competition.
