CSAIL, MechE marine experts win international self-driving boat competition

This week a team featuring multiple Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) researchers took home the grand prize in an international competition centered on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Members of CSAIL's Marine Robotics Group joined forces with more than 20 other researchers from MIT and Olin College as one of 15 teams competing in the Maritime RobotX Challenge, which took place Oct. 20-26 in Marina Bay, Singapore. Each research group spent the past year developing sensors, computers, and software for the "WAM-V," a self-driving propeller-motored boat that resembles an oversized jet-ski. For the competition, teams traversed a special course to complete tasks that demonstrated motion-planning, control, and autonomy, including avoidance and detection of obstacles, identifying targets, and searching underwater for acoustic sources. MIT-Olin outperformed other universities from Australia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States, earning the $24,000 grand prize -- and a not-insignificant amount of international respect.