"The goals of this competition are to challenge a new generation of engineers to design and build autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) capable of performing realistic missions in the underwater environment, and to foster ties between young engineers and the organizations developing AUV technologies."

CUAUV will compete in the 6th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR). The competition will be held July 31 - August 4, 2002, at the U.S. Navy's SPAWAR TRANSDEC facility in San Diego California.

The mission involves designing and building an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) that, in a 20 minute time frame:

1. Initialize system and start run.
2. Passes through a validation gate under autonomous control.
3. Approach Decision Point and determine active arrow.
4. Use on board sensors to arrive at the correct target
5. Deploy markers on top of active target.

For more information, see the Official Rules (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).