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 Aurora 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 2021-2022 academic year to complete both vehicles and are proud to showcase them in their final form.

For the internals of Aurora, we opted for a more spacious design this year. By spreading out the custom PCBs connected to the racks, we were able to gain valuable room to allow for easier integration and debugging. This has ultimately allowed us to experiment with new heating simulations and a proper channel for air flow as well as easier board access.

Leviathan, completely manufactured from scratch, features a design that deviates from the traditionally compact vehicles CUAUV produced in past years. Leviathan 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.

While Aurora and Leviathan are both designed to be able to complete a majority of the course on their own, we intend to have them both complete their own designated tasks so that they work as one cohesive unit.