What is RoboSub?

The Robosub competition is an exciting underwater robotics program in which teams of high school and college students from around the world design and build AUVs. These vehicles are designed to autonomously navigate through a series of tasks laid out in the challenge course. These tasks mimic ongoing research in autonomous underwater systems.

What Do The Vehicles Do?

Some of the tasks include passing through gates, manipulating buoys, identifying colors and shapes, gathering and dispensing objects, sorting objects, following pipelines, launching projectiles, finding an acoustic pingers, and more. With each annual competition comes a new theme with a different set of build tasks.

Where Is It Held?

The Woollett Aquatics Center in Irvine, California is hosting the competition this year with the organization of RoboNation. The Woollett Aquatics Center features two 50 meter pools.

What We Do

Every year, the AVBotz team works year-round to prepare a capable AUV, construct task props, connect with sponsors, and document our entire process. By August, we're ready to drive to Irvine to compete with and have fun with the teams at the competition. In an event filled with so many distinguished schools and engineering teams, we try our best to meet the caliber of engineering skill, even as a high school team. As we've seen in recent years, more and more teams—both university and high school—are joining RoboSub and each year we hope to learn and share ideas with each of them at comp.

Who Participates?

In 2023, more than 30 teams from five countries came together to compete in the TRANSDEC Anechoic Pool to show their mastery of engineering, mission design, and autonomous robotics.