The Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge (SAUVC): An effort to engage and expose young engineers to challenges of underwater robotics

The Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge, dubbed as SAUVC, is an effort by the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society Singapore Chapter to engage and expose the tertiary students to the challenges of AUV design. The programme was started in 2013 and was originally intended to create awareness among the local students on the importance of underwater robotics and its relevance to Singapore. However, it grew into an international competition from its very inception as it was felt that opening up the competition at an international level would add diversity to the design approaches. The competition is designed in a swimming pool format and requires the AUV to perform a series of tasks, which requires a good understanding of sensors and algorithms to navigate underwater. The teams were also required to present their designs and share their experiences to an invited audience. To increase the level participation at the international level the organising committee decided not to charge any registration fee. To boost local participation, the teams from Singapore were provided limited financial support to build their AUVs initially. Also the organising committee explored with the respective institutions on the possibility of awarding credits to the team members. So far we have conducted three competitions and it is a matter of pride for the organisers that the programme has been successful in nurturing a local team from National University of Singapore, which went on to perform well in the AUVSI Robosub competition and rise to 5th position in its second year of participation. The programme has been well supported by the National University of Singapore, DSO National Laboratories and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology. It has also been able to attract many sponsors including IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society, Office of Naval Research (Global) and both local and international industrial partners.