Held at the Founders Inn and Spa in Virginia Beach, Va., the International RoboBoat Competition challenges student teams to race autonomous surface vehicles (ASV) – vehicles that operate on the surface of the water without a crew – of their own design through an aquatic obstacle course.

The competition’s maritime obstacle course included an optional navigation channel and advanced challenges that include: docking and deploying an amphibious robot, shooting foam darts through hula-hoops on the shoreline, capturing a flag that was moving on a small boat, identifying a push button near the shore and depressing it, and identifying and classifying a heated target on the shore.

Sponsored by the Army Research Lab’s Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC) and UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training (IST), students from the Robotics Club at UCF worked on their boat’s design for the past year. They made improvements in hardware and software to last year’s entry, the Grey Goose, which won fourth place.

The team struggled early on in this year’s competition with a hardware issue that caused the robot’s motor to cut-off during runs early in the week. The team persevered and perfectly navigated the channel in the final round, winning them second place.

Teams were judged based on their performance during the course, in addition to utility of their team website. Teams were also required to submit a ten page journal paper and presentation video for evaluation by the judges. The paper described the design of the vehicle and rationale behind the design choice.

The competition was created in 2008 as an opportunity for students to develop skills in systems engineering by accomplishing realistic missions with ASV’s. The competition’s goal is to get young engineers excited about careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The competition draws entries from all over the world. Competitors included teams from Bradley º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Cedarville º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Florida Atlantic º£½ÇÖ±²¥, National Cheng Kung º£½ÇÖ±²¥, Old Dominion º£½ÇÖ±²¥, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Florida, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Michigan, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Rhode Island, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Texas at Arlington and Villanova º£½ÇÖ±²¥.

The Robotics Club at UCF includes:  Brandon Parmeter, UCF student and team captain; Andrew Watson, UCF student and lead software developer; Christopher Brice, UCF student; and Daniel Barber, Ph.D., a research associate at UCF and faculty advisor for the team.

“Competition this year was extremely competitive,� said Barber. “Despite challenges and bad weather, our team persevered and excelled. As always, we’d like to thank all our supporters from STTC and IST. The experience the students receive is invaluable, and it wouldn’t be possible without the help of our supporters.�

The club brought back a 2nd place and a check for $4,000.00 for the second consecutive year. Sponsored by Army Research Lab’s (ARL) Simulation and Training Technology Center (STTC) and the Institute for Simulation & Training (IST), they competed against 14 other schools from as far away as Taiwan.

Students are required to design and build an autonomous surface vehicle capable of, without any human intervention, channel navigation, obstacle avoidance and other advanced tasks such as spraying water onto shoreline targets. The UCF platform, Boatname the Brave, repeatedly passed through the departing gates and navigated a channel of red, green, and yellow buoys using a suite of sensors that includes a digital compass, laser range finder and digital camera.

Those watching the live status updates on Facebook over the weekend saw how UCF pushed through multiple challenges such as motor and electronics failure, and pulled together as a team to achieve the best channel navigation capability they have ever performed at the event.

More information about the event, including video recaps, can be found at RoboBoat.org. More about the Robotics Club and the team is at and Robotics at UCF on Facebook.

Speeding past 53 other schools, the º£½ÇÖ±²¥â€™s Robotics Club placed second in the 19th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition last weekend.

Students designed and built robots capable of moving through obstacle courses to reach GPS waypoints and follow lanes independently without any human intervention.

Composed of students from UCF’s Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs, the team began creating its robot, called Automaton, in August.

The international competition involved four events: the Design Challenge, Navigation Challenge, Autonomous Challenge and one involving how robots communicate, called Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, or JAUS Challenge.

UCF’s team took second place in the JAUS Challenge and in the Navigation Challenge, netting the team $7,000 in prize money. The team nabbed sixth place in the Autonomous Challenge.

The Design Challenge requires students to submit a 15-page design report and present to a panel of judges who review their approach.  In the Navigation Challenge, robots drive to six GPS waypoints surrounded by challenging obstacles in six minutes.

In the Autonomous Challenge, the robots must travel through a large maze filled with obstacles, following lane lines that fork and merge back together at different points.

Supporters and sponsors of the UCF team included the Army Research Laboratory’s Human Research Engineering Directorate, the Army’s Simulation and Training and Technology Center and UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training.

The UCF team included students David Adams, Michael Scherer, Jacob Carr, Robin Adams and Jonathan Mohlenhoff.

Daniel Barber, a research associate with IST, served as the team’s faculty adviser.

The international competition was sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

For more information about the competition, visit . To learn more about UCF’s Robotics Club, visit