The winning vehicle, the "SubjuGator," ran Windows XP Professional on an embedded Pentium M-based SBC (single-board computer).
(Click here for larger image of the SubjuGator)The SubjuGator uses an Advantech 3.5-inch form-factor
PCM-9380 SBC, equipped with a 1.6 GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 60GB hard drive, to perform real-time scene analysis on images supplied by two USB cameras, according to the team's
project whitepaper. The bulk of the vehicle's control and sensing functions are handled by a network of 15 Atmel ATmega8 8-bit microcontrollers communicating over I2C.
According to AUVSI, the competition involved fulfilling three missions:
- Rendezvous with a "docking station"
- Find and mark a break in an underwater pipeline
- Home in on an acoustic beacon and breech within a marked surface zone
None of the top four teams was able to complete more than one mission.
While the majority of the teams ran some version of Linux, two other competitors,
DeVry (17th place) and the
Indian Underwater Robotics Society (19th place), reported using Windows XP. A
Linux-powered submarine from Georgia Tech (12th place), the "Mongoose," was named Best Newcomer to the competition.
The Florida team, which took home $5,500 for its efforts, was followed by Ecole de Technologie Superieure (Montreal) in second place, MIT in third place, and Duke University in fourth place.
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