The FEFU Team with Its New Units Is Going to Participate in the International Underwater Robotics Competition
Online, June 16, 2014 (Newswire.com) - In late June, the FEFU team is going to the USA's Great Lakes to the world championship where it will present its remote-control submersible and in July, it will demonstrate the features of its new autonomous (non-controlled) robot at another international competition in San-Diego. At the present moment, the robot technicians are finishing the apparatuses' preparation and testing them in the small swimming pool of the FEFU campus.
Far-Eastern Federal University is an experienced participant of international students' submersibles competitions and an acknowledged world leader in this field. In 2010 and 2012, the Federal University's team was the leader of the world controlled submersibles championship. In 2013, the autonomous robot designed by FEFU students got the bronze prize of the international RoboSub competition and won the Asia's Open Championship.
As the tutor of the FEFU robot technicians' team, corresponding fellow of the Far-Eastern Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences, professor Aleksandr Shcherbatyuk told, the undergraduate and graduate students have designed two brand new robots for this year's competitions. They have new control systems, new design concepts, and reworked software for accomplishing tasks. A group of young researchers of FEFU's School of Engineering and School of Natural Sciences, electric engineers, mechanic engineers, computer security experts and programmers-to-be, has been working on them for several months.
The nearest competition is the 13th MATE International Competition which is going to take place in late June in Alpena, Michigan, USA, at the world-famous Great Lakes. A record number of participants, 35 teams from 11 countries, is going to take part in the most prestigious competition in this field. Russia will be presented, alongside with FEFU, by Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Nevelskoy Maritime State University. Undercover, the robots controlled by the pilots will have to explore a sunken ship: measure its length, identify its name and build year by the wreckage scattered on the bottom, collect industrial waste and deliver it to the water surface, collect samples of the bottom's rich layer, and measure the water's salinity in the wreck zone.
In late July, the strongest robot technicians of the world are going to meet in San-Diego, California, USA, at traditional International RoboSub Competition of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles 2014. Here, the autonomous robot will have to accomplish a number of specific problems independently without any communication with humans above the water surface. This competition is compared with an engineering Super Cup and FEFU is the only Russian university taking part in the RoboSub this year.