About CUAUV!

The Team

CUAUV is entirely undergraduate-run, consisting of over 40 students spanning numerous academic disciplines. The team offers a holistic engineering experience developing cutting-edge technology; students control the entire design, manufacturing, testing, and revision cycle. As a seven-time RoboSub champion, CUAUV embodies a tradition of excellence and continuously pushes the envelope of autonomous underwater vehicle technology.

The Competition

CUAUV designs, builds, programs, and tests two completely autonomous underwater vehicles every year to compete in AUVSI’s international RoboSub Competition. In late July, we travel with our AUVs to San Diego, drop them in a recommissioned Navy testing pool, press the green button, and cheer them on as they navigate a complicated underwater obstacle course with no human intervention whatsoever: ramming buoys, dropping weighted darts on targets, firing torpedoes through differently colored rings, picking up PVC structures, and more.

The Vehicles

The vehicles Kraken and Leviathan are the culmination of CUAUV’s over 20 years of experience in designing, manufacturing, and competing with AUVs. Our team has worked diligently during the 2019-2020 academic year to complete both vehicles and are proud to showcase them in their final form.

Kraken is derived from Odysseus, one of our vehicles from the 2019 Robosub Competition. Kraken features a new battery mounting system as well as a more robust network of valves on our valve enclosure to further prevent water intrusion. A new hydrophones enclosure has been added to Kraken with a fourth piezoelectric transducer to aid in tracking pingers more accurately during the competition. Additionally, there is a newly designed transmit enclosure which will work in tandem with the hydrophones system to achieve inter-sub communication.

Leviathan has been designed and manufactured from scratch this build cycle and its design deviates from the traditionally compact vehicles CUAUV has recently produced. Like Kraken, Leviathan also has a new hydrophones enclosure with four elements as well as a transmit enclosure. Newly designed battery pod enclosures are mounted easily on this vehicle, and within these enclosures is a new in-pod battery management system. Leviathan also hosts a fully functioning pneumatic system with torpedoes and droppers.